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LIGHTS 


•A.2sT:D 



SACRED STORY. 



JULIA MCNAIR WRIGHT, 

»\ 

AUTHOR OF "EARLY CHURCH IN BRITAIN,” ETC., ETC. 


-NIL NISI CRUCE.* 



C S3 o ) 


J. C. McCURDY & COMPANY, 

PHILADELPHIA, PA., 

CINCINNATI, 0., CHICAGO, ILL., AND ST. LOUIS, MO. 

1875 




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by 
JULIA McNAIR WRIGHT, 

the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



F 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 


THE LOST HOME 

WAITING FOR THE SIGNAL. V ■ 

DOOM OF THE ALTAR. 


FOUNTAIN OF THE DRAGON. 




(A 


HOREB OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. 

VISION OF THE PARADISE OF GOD. be 


3 



PREFACE. 


HE cause of God is one. All revelation, for every age, 
discloses the same animating purpose — the bringing 
of men to God. Consequently, God’s dealings with men, 
having a common object, are ever generically the same, 
and the Word of God is largely a record of the varieties of that 
discipline which seeks the eternal happiness of man. 

In this present work, we enter into no arguments on the 
authority of Scripture. We expect of our readers a prejudice in 
favor of it, as a rule of faith and practice. 

God calls to Him His child, and puts into his hand a key to 
unlock the mysteries of his present and future life, and this key 
is the Bible. To him who studies these records, light arises. 

Those wonderful ways of Providence, which have been dark as 
Erebus, glow with a sudden splendor. He beholds not only that 
“ immense hope which has crossed the earth,” but sees walking 
in its sheen men who, from Eden until the present, are the 
exponents of God’s dealings with humanity ; in whose toils and 
conquests ; in whose losses and compensations ; in whose agony 
and jubilation ; in whose sins and righteousness, we can learn justly 
to estimate ourselves and our fellows. 



5 


6 


PREFACE. 


For exactly as the world grows practically in the knowledge 
and love of God, the human mind becomes known to itself, and 
man correspondingly bends toward his fellows in brotherly love 
and compassion ; becoming less an unjust judge, but more and 
more a Christian Philosopher, and therefore more largely a Chris- 
tian Philanthropist. 

We are God’s little children, set to learn in His school, and He 
teaches us, as becomes our simple estate, rather by object lessons 
than by abstractions. We hold this vast advantage in these les- 
sons of the Bible, that they are absolutely true to human experi- 
ence. Here they are lifted infinitely above the productions of 
human imagination, which forever tends to extremism in one form 
or another. In God’s Word we have not only the history of good 
men’s virtues, but of good men’s direful sins. 

In human romance the hero is generally perfect, and we know 
better than to believe in him ; in God’s true Book the heroes are 
of our “ fellow-servants,” fashioned of that same frail clay whereof 
we ourselves are made. 

So also as man inclines to make his hero a saint, he is apt to 
make his sinner a criminal of the most notorious type. On the 
contrary, the Bible exhibits to us not only the openly ungodly, 
who receive their meed of shame and contempt, but the Christless 
moralist, who maintains a gracious outward seeming, who climbs 
high in all the honors of earth, and who falls at last like Mulciber, 
“ sheer from the crystal battlements of heaven.” 

In these chronicles we find answered for us many of those puz- 
zling queries over which worldly philosophy has stumbled. As 
the Sphinx sat on the road to Thebes, with an unanswerable riddle 


PREFACE. 


7 


on her lips, the world has sat on the great highway of the stars, 
puzzling all her servants with questions none can understand, until 
faith finds them definitely settled in the Scriptures. 

The history of worldly philosophy^ a history of profound mis- 
takes ; but when we enter into Bible history and Bible philosophy, 
we escape from what Goethe called “ a wearisome circle on a barren 
heath ,” and are come into a realm of peace, order, beauty, clas- 
sified facts, unfolded reasons, and the sunshine of Divine guidance 
and over-ruling. 

When we turn our backs on this region of light, and go wan- 
dering into the mists of human wisdom, we, little children, are lost 
children ; we are far from home in wilderness shadows ; horrible 
spectres crowd about us ; dismal echoes mock our cries ; and dim, 
disastrous twilight lies over all our world. 

But in the study of Scripture nothing is more deplorable than 
a divorce of the heart from the head ; and in no department of 
Scripture are we more prone to this error than in a study of its 
Biography. The scholar is apt to look on the Biographies of Scrip- 
ture as a sort of statistics of the Kingdom ; its men and women 
are a mere array of facts and figures — census tables of a far away 
time, of no practical daily importance. The careless reader be- 
holds in it a Sabbath Dream-Book and Fairy Tale. To others, 
the Old and New Testaments speak of those set by remarkable 
circumstances of their life entirely out of the range of our sympa- 
thies and present exigencies. If we indulge in mere fanciful mu- 
sings, these personages become to us shadowy ideals, rather than 
bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh. 

To gain from the, people of the Bible that instruction for which 


PREFACE. 


1 

8 

they were embalmed in Holy Writ, we must believe in them and 
think of them until we have brought them into the immediate 
circle of our acquaintances and friends. 

We must live in their atmosphere. We must go out of our 

• . 

homes and dwell with them in the storied east when the world 
was young. We must sit in their tent-doors and turn our faces as 
theirs are turned, toward that distant horizon where was to arise 
that Sun which is called Christ. 

We must learn and love and hope with these Bible men and 
women. We must with them sit by the cradles of mighty empires, 
and we must realize that while the Book of God is growing piece 
by piece, first by oral tradition, and then by written record, the 
religion of God, the plan of salvation, has come to the early fami- 
lies of the race full armed and beautiful, the true Athene. 

Having thus learned these people as real people in their own age 
and region, we must make them part of our own lives ; we must 
bring them into our surroundings ; lead them with us in the jost-» 
ling ways of modern business ; set them down in our studies and 
libraries; inspire them with our ambitions; perplex them with 
our cares ; enlighten them with all the garnered lore the earth has 
laid up for us; and, as they once always looked forward, we must 
place them where they can now look back to that dear Christ who 
came, and onward to that glorious King who is coming still. Put 
them where we are, between the two advents of our Lord. Then 
shall all the galaxy of Scripture character warn and instruct us 
what our God would have us do, shun, and be ; how He helps us ; 
why He tries us ; and what shall be the end of steadfast faith and 
of perverse desire. 


PREFACE. 


9 


Such studies teach us the unity of the human race, the unity 
of God’s plan for man ; we realize Christ as the central thought not 
only of the Bible, but of all history ; we are learners in that grand 
school of Theology which Zuingle has aptly called “ God’s thought 
in his own Word.” 

The object of this present volume has been not to exhaust such 
a plan as this, but simply to exhibit it in a few suggestive outlines ; 
to encourage and popularize the study of the Scripture ; to show 
that this study is no dry, repellant task, but can be made cheerful 
and most inviting ; that general reading, and classical studies, ard 
the severer researches of modern criticism, can be as comely priest- 
esses to minister at its shrine. 

There has been of late a general awakening of interest in regard 
to the Holy Scriptures. Copies of the Bible are wonderfully mul- 
tiplied, and there is a vastly increased demand for all books serving 
to explain or assist the study of the Sacred Oracles. 

This is evidently God’s great day of preparation for tremendous 
events and trials, when men shall need all that armor of truth 
which is now being forged for them. It therefore becomes every 
reasonable being, not only every Christian so-called, but every 
thinking mind which desires to be a competent judge in its own 
behalf, to take advantage of every increased opportunity for acqui- 
ring this knowledge. 

To the noble array of works on Biblical subjects these few studies 
of the “ Lights and Shadows of Sacred Story” are offered as an hum- 
ble contribution. Inasmuch as they contain the golden truths of 
God, they have in them an imperishable element. The Author has 
endeavored to gather about certain prominent characters of Scrip- 


10 


PREFACE. 


ture some of the products of historical, geographical, and critical 
research ; designing especially to give those who have not oppor- 
tunity for extended studies and libraries at command, part of the 
results of the investigations of others. The wish has been, not 
merely to cast the Biblical narrative into some other form of 
speech, but to cluster about it its correlated facts, and those inci- 
dents of time, place, and influence which the Lord has left the 
readers of His Word to search out for themselves. 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


i. 

CAIN AND ABEL. 

THE GENESIS OF RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE. 

Fypes of humanity— An error of parental judgment — Eve’s idea of the 
Saviour — The first Revelation of Christ — The name Taveh — The hope 
set on Cain — His training — The first household — Its privileges — Cain’s 
idea of himself — His pride cultivated — Abel’s education — Mistakes 
concerning Cain — Cain a moralist — Sacrifices — Sword symbol — The 
narrative not a mere murder case — Religion and the sword — The two 
offerings — What was wrong — The sin of self-righteousness — Cain’s 
rejection of a Saviour— Fables of antiquity — Penitence and thankful- 
ness — Religious war — The altar— God’s mark on Cain — The line of 
martyrs — God’s argument with Cain — A full Gospel— Meaning of 
hattoth 25 


II. 

ENOCH. 

THE PREACHER OF THE RESURRECTION. 

A wonderful epoch — The ancient home — Man’s high ancestry — The 
intent of the Genealogy — Enoch’s family life — His friends — The elder 
patriarchs — Learning of the antediluvians— Overlapping generations — 
Age of gold — Legends of Enoch— Enoch’s living and walking— Enoch 
and Elihu — Meaning of walking with God — Enoch the first foreign mis- 
sionary — His errand — His audience — The sons of Cain — The sermon — 
Promise of the Resurrection — Enoch’s vision— Influence — Reason of 
his translation — Mystical number seven — Enoch’s descendants — Enoch 
a family saint — End of Sethic annals — Sethic economy — Macrobian 
heroes 


11 


12 


CONTENTS. 


III. 

ABRAHAM. 

FELLOW-CITIZEN WITH THE SAINTS. 

The princely patriarch — God’s great Nomad — The line of Sliem — Earli- 
est idolatry — Abraham’s teachers — Terah — Death of Haran — Terah’s 
failure — The pilgrim line — Population and civilization in Abraham’s 
day — Abraham’s renunciation of the world — The sojourn in Egypt — 
Abraham’s wealtu — Character — Family — Friends — First battle — Mel- 
chizedek— His symbols — Abraham’s example — Classic legends — Birth 
of Isaac — Trial of faith — Age and character of Isaac— His part in the 
sacrifice — Death of Sarah — Eastern courtesy — The royal burial-place — 

A bridal — Abraham’s citizenship — His going home — End of pilgrimage 
— Inheritance — Faith and fruition — Rest at last 64 

f 

IV. 

JACOB AND ESAU. 

THE STRIFE OF NATURE AND GRACE. 

Problems for parents — Inherited traits — Esau like his mother— Jacob 
like his father— Isaac’s wrong intention — Unfitness of Esau for spiri- 
tual birthright — The ambition of Jacob — The pleasure loving of Esau 
— The strife of physical and spiritual — Our sympathy with Esau — 
Hasty judgment — The two birthrights — No injustice done Esau — The 
brothers — Their differing views — Esau’s wives — The sale of the birth- 
right — Jacob’s greed — Esau’s profanity — An oriental picture— Isaac’s 
error — The course of Rebecca — Her vindication — Esau’s contempt and 
Esau’s tears — Esau gets exactly what he wants — His inheritance — 
Jacob’s experiences — His punishments — Was Esau rejected ? — Meaning 
of God’s loving and hating — Esau a saved soul — Conversion of both 
brothers— Their reconciliation— Jacob’s last hours 90 


V. 

JOSEPH. 

THE PROFITS OF GODLINESS. 

The argument of Eliphaz — Dealings of God with men — Joseph a nearly 
perfect character — Judah and Joseph — The triple cord — Turning point 
of Israelitish history — Three divisions of Joseph’s life — Infancy and 


CONTENTS. 


13 


youth — Quarrels over the birthright — Joseph a Nazarite — An Eastern 
scene — Early caravans — Jacob’s woe — The epoch of slavery — Experi- 
ences in serfdom — Joseph’s trials and temptations — Standfast and 
Madam Bubble — Potipliar’s injustice — Ingratitude — Sudden elevation 
— Joseph in prosperity — His era of splendor — Joseph a cosmopolitan — 

The changed brothers — Judah’s character — Joseph tries his brothers — 
Meeting of father and son — Typology of Christ — Death — Burial 110 

VI. 

PHARAOH. 

EGYPT AGAINST HEAVEN. 

Pharaoh the antagonist of God — Views of Bunsen — God’s intention in the 
history — Who was this Pharaoh ? — His ancestors — His education— His 
prospects— His country — Splendor of Egypt — Its power — The great 
pyramid — Character of the Egyptians — Pride and self-justification — 
Book of the Dead — Opinions of ancient historians — The Lord’s mes- 
sage — Meaning, time, extent, bearing and terror of the ten plagues — 

An ascending series — Their bearing on the Egyptian gods — The Earth 
Mother — Pharaoh’s duplicity — His confessions — Safety of Israel — The 
death of the first-born — The angel with the sword — A mad pursuit — 

The utter ruin of Sethos and his army — Character of Pharaoh — Death 
of Egypt — The birth of history 183 


VII. 

MOSES. 

FAITH IN ACTION. 

The true heroes of earth — Origin of the Egyptians — Builders of the 
pyramid — Melchizedek— The Philitian Shepherds — The gentle king — 
Sesostris— Rameses — Legends of Moses’ birth— The queen regent— 
Youth of Moses— Rejects the empire — Classic memories of Moses 
— His exile — Forty years of probation — Moses’ struggle against God 
— The secret of his after bravery — The song of Moses— Moses and 
Israel— His gifts— His prayers— Types in his life — His faith — His 
death — His grave 160 


VIII. 

MIRIAM AND DEBORAH. 

THE THECORATIC STATUS OF WOMEN. 

Legends of good women — Scriptural types of womanhood— Likeness of 
Miriam and Deborah — Traditions of Miriam — Early life — Beauty of 


14 


CONTENTS. 


Miriam — Her equality with Aaron— Her culture — Her prophetic office 
— Her sin— The place God accorded Miriam — Woman fit for any station 
where she is needed — Women as rulers — “Divine principles” — God 
not hedged by men’s rules — Office w T ork of man and woman — The law 
of necessity — Broadening of woman’s sphere — The palm-tree of Debo- 
rah — Deborah a mother in Israel — God’s choice of Deborah — The 
strength of her patience — Warrior women — Leadership thrust upon 
Deborah— The signal — Jael’s deed— Her glory — The woman leaning 
from a lattice — God’s thought for women — The abilities of /women — 
Historical examples— Intuition and instinct— Weakness and strength — 
Education — Godliness — Marriage the God -implanted instinct of the 
race — Legal and natural disability — Mental and spiritual equality — 
Faith the measure of valor — True unity — The highest destiny 182 


IX. 

ACHAN. 

THE SINNER IN THE CHURCH. 

The Bible presents typical characters — Judas — Sinners in the church — 

The tenth commandment — Covetous Christians an anomaly — Covetous 
angels — A chan “ the troubler ” — Jericho — Its glory and wealth — Con- 
secration of metals — Events at Gilgal — An honorable man — Covetous- 
ness a habit — Achan’s temptation — Robbing God — The judgment — 
Achan’s exposure — His doom — His family influence — Reason for the 
death of all the household — Achans in the modern church — Our 
crying evil — Warning — A beggared soul — The great lesson 200 


X. 

SAMSON. 

THE SAINT OF IRON AND CLAY. 

Need and supply — Cause and effect — The wife of Manoah — A Danite 
home — Portraits of Manoah and his wife — Boyhood of Samson — 
Danite genius— Power running riot— Muscular Christianity — Wisdom 
and strength — The boy of Zorali — Inheritance of Dan — Manners of 
the tribe — Iron and clay — The beauty of Timnath— Love-making — 
Philistine wecTding— First of hermits — Slaughter at Lehi — Palmy days 
— The girl of Gaza — The enchantress of Sorek — Samson Agonistes — 

The fallen Nazarite — Samson in his right mind — The true hero — The 
patriot and saint — Heathen reminiscences of Samson — The real Her- 
cules— The imperfect instrument 211 


CONTENTS. 


15 


XI. 

SAMUEL. 

RELIGION IN GOVERNMENT. 

The man and his time — Questions of Government — The theocracy — 
Christ first revealed as a king — Beginning of the theocratic kingdom — 

The covenant at Sinai — Christ’s early visible kingdom — History of 
theocratic times — Children of the sun— Expectations of the Philis- 
tines — Traces of Joshua in profane history — Period of the Judges — 

The child of prayers — Samuel’s parents — Parallel of Hannah and the 
Virgin Mary — Their songs — Prophetic women — The youthful saint, 
and the youthful profligates — Samuel called to the prophetic office — 

The ark and the God of covenant — Samuel lost for twenty years — 
National convention — Politics and religion — Their unity and contra- 
riety — Samuel as a military and civil leader — Godliness and happiness 
— Aim of national existence — Religious status of nations — Religious 
responsibility of nations — The prophet’s simplicity and prosperity — 

The people rebel against their king — The beginning of decay — Typology 
of Jewish kingdom — The people before Samuel and before Pilate — 
Formal rejection of Christ — Samuel at Gilgal — Thunder in harvest — 
Close of four centuries of the theocracy — A king like the nations 231 


XII. 

SAUL. 

GOVERNMENT WITHOUT RELIGION. 

The government still theocratic — Ancient constitution yet in force — The 
king’s King— Division of Church and State— The Lord’s anointed — 

The Flower of Israel — The land of Benjamin — Its beauty and history 
— Early character of Saul — Esthetic spirit of Samuel — “Your king 
walketh before you” — The satrapy of the sky— Saul’s real prime- 
minister — Pathetic tie — Saul spoiled by prosperity — Saul’s rebellion — 
Saul mistakes his position — Mania of Saul — Prosperity of early reign 
— The vengeance of the Lord — Doom of Amalek — Samuel’s grief — 
Death of Agag — Saul’s despair — Real crime of Saul — Need be of his 
punishment — Demoniacal possession — Death of Samuel — The fall of 
kingdoms— Absolute need of religion to sustain nations — Weakness 
and ruin of godless nations — Harod — The horrible silence — Witch 
woman — The death of a brave man — Saul’s perverted spirit — Bread on 
the -waters— David sings an elegy— Burial of the ashes 251 


16 


CONTENTS. 


XIII. 

DAVID. 

A GREAT SINNER AND A TRUE SAINT. 

The bloom-time of Jewish history — Ancestry of David — Raliab and 
Ruth — Our acquaintance with the character of David — Genius of the 
son of Jesse— His personal beauty — David as a warrior— The mystery 
of David’s life — His cliild-like lowliness — His sins and his repentings 
— His virtues — The close of the second period of his life — David’s 
diary — Hebron — Seven years’ reign — The kingdom of Palestine — 
Hiram and David — Tyre — David unhurt by prosperity — The dynasty 
of David — Sovereigns of the Orient — Piety and lawful authority — 

No union of Church and State — The true ideal of a ruler — David’s 
grand mistakes — A lawful wife — David’s zeal — David’s wrath — Uriah’s 
wife — The curse of the sword — Fourfold restoration— The story of 
Amnon — Absalom — The watch of Rizpali — The rebellion of the theo- 
cratic king— The sin of the census— The sin of David — The share of 
the people in the sin — The old covenant — Duty of nations toward 
God — Baal pleading — Bartholomew of 1871 — Angel of destruction — 
Adonijali’s rebellion — David’s legacy to kings — Difference between 
saints and sinners — The rule of judgment 269 


XIV. 

ABSALOM. 

man’s capacity for failure. 

Lessons of history — Failure as a rule — Failures in national life — Failures 
in religion — Man’s house building — Failures in domestic government 
— Faith and training — Covenant relations of households — Failures of 
David — The law of marriage — Godliness and matrimony — The sanctity 
of the home — Absalom’s mother — Plurality of wives — Eastern laws of 
inheritance and succession — The throne of Israel not a hereditament — 
Claims of David’s sons on the throne — Culpable indulgence of David 
— The graces of Absalom — Absalom Tamar’s legitimate protector — 

His provocations — The King’s Dale — A scene of terror — The woman 
of Tekoah — Joab— Error of Chronology — Absalom’s revolt— His 
hatred to David — Civil war — Joab and the soldier — The lament over 
Absalom 294 


CONTENTS. 


17 


XV. 

SOLOMON. 

heaven’s expositor of the world. 

Solomon an inheritance for the world— Fantastic stories— Extent of the 
legends — Little known of Solomon — The Biblical history of Solomon — 

By whom written — His writings — His saintly character — His sinful 
character — Object of this double portraiture — Influences of his child- 
hood — His tutor — Bathslieba — His youth — The beginning of his reign 
— Alliances — Traffic in the days of Solomon — The building of the 
temple— The splendor of Solomon’s reign — Departure from theocratic 
principles — Moral character of Solomon — Darker shades of character 
— Personal ambition — Extravagance — Solomon’s wisdom — Tennent’s * 
Trance — Unlawful wisdom — Astrology and divination — Modern ration- 
alism — The angel in the sun — Unbelief and superstition— Loves of 
Solomon — Idolatry — Koheleth — The Persians — The book of ecclesi- 
astes— Earthly wisdom — True wisdom — The noble lesson— The last 
analysis of earth and its honors — Entering heaven as a little child — 
Divine pity 309 

XVI. 

JEROBOAM. 

IDOLATRY THE RELIGION OF THE NATURAL MAN. 

Atheism not natural to the mind — Beligion natural to man — Innate idea 
of God — Revelation coeval with man — Traditions of the Shemitic 
race — Bel-worship — Its origin — Extent — Duration — Winged bulls — 

Calf worship — The religion of the natural man — Milton’s Baal — Jero- 
boam — His early Character — Position under Solomon — Israel and 
Judah — The gay captain — The prophet Ahijah — The new cloak — 
Promises and warnings — Jeroboam changed — A rebel — Fleeing into 
Egypt — A father’s disappointment — Coronation at Shechem — The 
Hebrew Miss Kilmansegg — The Jewish Marseillaise — The reign of 
Jeroboam — Formal apostasy of Israel — Jeroboam’s heart — Bethel — 

The nameless prophet — The doom of the altar — Tirzah — The dead 
heir — The heart left to its own devices — Idolatry — God’s offer of 
mercy — Full Gospel — The hope 335 

XVII. 

JEZEBEL AND HER DAUGHTER. 

STATUS OF WOMEN WITHOUT RELIGION. 

Eth-baal, king of Tyre — Phoenicians and Jews— The king of Samaria — 

The reigning beauty of Tyre — Early days of Jezebel — Visit of ambas- 

2 


18 


CONTENTS. 


sadors — Wedding gifts — The bridal journey — Power of Jezebel — The 
grove of Astarte — Ahab’s idolatry — Character of Ahab— Elijah and 
his burden — The trial of strength on Carmel — Rage of Jezebel — 
Naboth’s vineyard — The curse — Prayers of bad men effectual with God 
— Marriage of Athaliah-=-The fatal day — The dying king — The queen 
mother — Jehu the avenger — Athaliah queen regent — The death of 
Joram and Ahaziah — Jezebel’s last hope — Her fate — Athaliah’s brief 
triumph — A royal murderess — Mother and daughter — The destruction 
of a usurper — Womanhood set free of God — Status of Hebrew women 
— Political position of women — Woman’s first duty to her race — His- 
torical examples 858 

XVIII. 

JONAH. 

THE STUMBLING SAINT. 

Bunyan’s vision — The selfish brother — A legitimate wonder-land — Con- 
tradictory character of Jonah — Absolute fact — Time of Jonah’s pro- 
phecy — His first mission — A Jew’s prejudice — His reluctance to warn 
Nineveh — History of Nineveh — Glory, extent and strength of the city 
— Jonah finding fault with God— A narrow-minded saint — Exclusive- 
ness — Tarsliish — Jonah’s journey — The storm — Casting lots— Kindness 
of heathen sailors — The great fish — Type of Christ — Effect of trouble 
— Jonah ashore — Second message — The extent of the knowledge of 
God — Fasting and repenting — Jonah’s temper — Jonah’s sulks — The 
scene before Jonah — The gourd— Its great lesson — Traditions of 
Jonah’s further history — The tomb of Jonah 380 

XIX. 

ISAIAH. 

THE HERALD OF THE MORNING. 

The world and its religion— The central thought — Christ the centre of 
history — From Adam to Calvary — From Calvary until to-day — En- 
shrouding night — The promise of Christ — No change of system — 
Different prophets — Daniel and John — The son of Amoz— The oriental 
prophet — His messages to the nations — Very little of his personal 
history known — A pencil dipped in light — Isaiah’s w T oe — Isaiah’s wife 
— The prophetess — The child of mystical promise — Meeting with 
Aliaz — A storied spot — Deadly combat — Ahaz and the sign — The Vir- 
gin’s son — The babe with a mystic name — The magnificent ode — Death 
of Ahaz — The reign of Hezekiah — Sennacherib’s host — The astronomi- 
cal wonder — Embassy from Babylon — Merodach-Baladan — The seer’s 
joy — The vision of “the king in his beauty” 395 


CONTENTS. 


19 


XX. 

JEREMIAH. 

GLORIFYING GOD IN THE FIRE. 

The child of Anathoth — The nurture of the prophet — The mantle of 
Isaiah — The prophetess Huldah— 1 The boy king and the boy seer — The 
voice — The hidden book — Great is Baal — The fire in the bones — Jere- 
miah’s cry — The voice in the gloom — National disasters of Judah — 

The counsels of Jeremiah — The mob — The burnt roll — The puppet 
king — Jeremiah’s dungeon — The Ethiopian eunuch — The hero in 
chains — Fall of the holy city — The dead Nazarites — Failures in king- 
craft — The good Gedaliali — The massacre — Captivity in Egypt — Tradi- 
tions of Jeremiah’s last days — The divine face — Sorrowing souls — The 
Lord shall wipe away all tears 411 


XXI. 

NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 

THE FALL OF THE HEAD OF GOLD. 

The great kingdom — Nebo the magnificent — The head of gold — The 
day-spring of power — The Babylonian empire — Conquests of Nebo — 

An oriental despot — Character of the king — The heir of a throne — The 
glory of nations — Babylon the beautiful — Nebuchadnezzar as a war- 
rior — As an architect — The tower of Belus — -Nebo a religious man — 
Whims of a monarch — Cruelties of Nebo — Especial favors of God — 
Free speech — Three great experiences — Visions — Nebuchadnezzar sees 
the Son of God — The warning — The fearful fall — The watcher and the 
Holy One — The grand lesson — Madness of the monarch — The preser- 
vation of the kingdom — Restoration — The lesson learned — The glory of 
sunset — Babylon left desolate 425 


XXII. 

DANIEL. 

THE SAINTLY COURTIER. 

Temptation and failure — Daniel the great example of sustaining grace — 
The plain of Shinar — The great migrations of the race — The progressive 
people — View of the Chaldeans — The scourge of Judah — The captive 
princes — A perilous childhood — The education of Daniel — Two choice 
virtues of the Babylonians— The boy on the tower of Babel — Among 


20 


CONTENTS. 


the Magi — The life of a courtier — Keeping the heart — The royal 
favorite — Susa — The dream — Changes in the kingdom — Daniel in pri- 
vate life — The night of terror— The hand on the wall — The kings after 
Nebo — The cylinders — Bible truth triumphant — The courtier of the 
skies — Again in power — The captives by Euphrates — Cyrus the son of 
prophecy — Assyrian feasts — Time to be religious — The holy triumvi- 
rate — Visions — The den of lions — Daniel and John — Seventy weeks — 
Memory of Zion — The fountain of help — The everlasting compensa- 
tion 447 


XXIII. 

NEHEMIAH. 

THE PATRIOTISM OF RELIGION. 

Jewish fortunes after Daniel’s time — Policy of the Chaldeans — Baby- 
lonish rulers — The work of Haggai and Zachariali — Edicts of Cyrus — 

The mission of Ezra — Ezra’s consistency — The cup-bearer — Jews from 
Jerusalem — Religion is patriotic as it is filial — Patriotism of the Jew — 

Sad before the king — The request — The w T alls of Jerusalem — The cor- 
tege — Three days’ rest — The midnight expedition — The fountain of 
the Dragon — The widowed city — Enemies — Modern Nehemiahs — End 
of the first visit to Jerusalem — Return to Babylon — Re-commissioned 
as Tirsliatha — Probity of Nehemiah — Vitality of the Jewish nation — 
N'ehemiah as a Reformer — The restored city — Extreme measures — For- 
eign marriages — “ Remember me, O my God, for good 1 ” 470 


XXIV. 

JOSHUA THE SON OF JOZADEK. 

THE ROYAL HIGH-PRIESTHOOD OF OUR LORD. 

The man and his office — Crying need of a priestly office — The cry for a 
Daysman — The Levitical priesthood — Levi’s antitype — The three suc- 
cessions of Levitical priests — Joshua and his captive father — A man 
made for his time — Early days — Variety of types — Two rulers — The 
book of Hebrews — The Priest of the present dispensation — A Priest 
forever — Melchizedek — Day of atonement — Incense and blood — Levi 
and Jesus — The Christ and the Holy of Holies — The Return of the 
high-priest — Return of Joshua — Vision of Zachariali — Man and his 
Redeemer — The new temple — Delineation of Jesus — Our High-Priest. 488 


i 


CONTENTS. 


21 


THE ERA OF HOPE FULFILLED. 

XXV. 

JOHN THE BAPTIST. 

THE IRON LINK. 

Time between Maliclii and Matthew — Darkness and dawn — Abrahamic 
piety — Woman and her Redeemer — Mary and Elizabeth — The prayer 
of Zacliarias — God giving abundantly — Greatness of John Baptist — 

The last Nazarite — Silence — The desert school — The new Elijah — The 
wilderness cry — Final expression of the Old Testament — John and 
Jesus — The fiery furnace — John and the Martyrs — The Iron Link — 
Prominent traits of John Baptist — John and the Sanhedrim — John as 
a preacher — John’s baptism — Its meaning — Offence of John — John 
and Herod — The new Jezebel — Fear of Herod — John’s dungeon — 
Horeb of the new Elijah — The commission — The answer — Christ’s 
defence of John — Dying grace — John’s last hour — Death — Terrors of 
Herod — John and Abel — The birthday of Herod — The marriage of 
Navarre — The departure of Jesus — Christ’s harbinger 408 


XXVI. 

HEROD. 

THE TRIUMPH AND FALL OF EDOM. 

Contrasts of Scripture — God’s thoughts — Chief of the Idumeans — The 
tent of Isaac — History of Edom in brief — Antipater — Herod and 
Antony — Aristobulus the boy priest — Herod made king — Marriage 
with Mariamne — Murder of Aristobulus — Asmoneans and Idumeans 
— Salome and Herod — Execution of Mariamne — Herod haunted — 
Works of Herod — Herod and Esau — Murder of his sons — Opening of 
David’s tomb — Time of Christ’s birth — The taxing — Horrible suffer- 
ings of Herod — Disgrace — His son Antipater — The last decree — Ex- 
pectation of a Messiah — The nations — The Star in the East — Christ 
and heathen nations — Tacitus, Suetonius and Virgil — Eastern magi — 
Magi at Jerusalem — Murder of the innocents — Antagonism of Jacob 
and Esau — The babes avenged . 519 


22 


CONTENTS. 


XXVII. 

PETER. 

THE EARTHLY AND THE HEAVENLY IMPULSE. 

God choosing liis instruments — Jonas the fisherman — His sons and their 
partners — Social position of the Apostles — The four fishermen and 
John Baptist — John and Andrew — Behold the Lamb of God — Andrew 
and John following Jesus — Prince of hospitality — Andrew hastens to 
Peter — The new name — Capernaum — Three calls of Peter — The love 
of Peter — His age, family and character — The draught of fishes — 
Apostolic office, 'primus inter pares — Sayings of Peter — Peter com- 
mended — And rebuked — Favors bestowed on Peter — His doings — The 
glory of the transfiguration scene — The last supper — Warnings of 
Peter — Three assertions — Three warnings in the garden — The arrest 
of Jesus — The judgment hall — The three denials — The world’s great 
penitent — Day of agony — John and Peter — The disappearance of Peter 
— Day of the Crucifixion — The Sabbath of waiting — Easter morning 
— The risen Lord — Silence — Peter’s unrest — Peter and his fishing — 
Peter in the wrong place — The mountain and the sea — The three 
questions — The restored disciple — Peter at Pentecost — Further life of 
Peter — He was never at Rome — Miracles of Peter — Paul and Peter — 
Legends — Peter’s death — The Castor and Pollux of the Church leading 
the sacramental host 537 


XXVIII. 

PILATE AND GALLIO. 

TWO POLITICAL TIME-SERVERS. 

Pilate as Governor — His cruel disposition — His unpopular deeds — The 
trial of Jesus — His one advocate — Claudia Procula — Pilate’s three 
stratagems — His yielding — Pilate a coward — Last act in the drama — 
Gallio and Seneca — Early days — Genial disposition — Paul at Corinth 
— The city — Religion of the Stoics — Jews, Greeks and Gallio — Gal- 
lio’s justice and folly — His injustice — His return to Rome — Death of 
Seneca — Death of Gallio 507 


XXIX. 

PAUL. 

THE MODEL OF THE MINISTRY. 

The world’s rest-time — Tarsus — A Hebrew home — Early training of 
Paul — Gamaliel — Life at Jerusalem — Death of Stephen — Journey to 


CONTENTS. 


23 


Damascus-rSeeing Jesus — Paul equipped for the apostolic office — 
Damascus — Arabia — The escape — Jerusalem — A vision — Tarsus — 
Shifting scenes — Paul’s eloquence — Athens — Greek art — Paul the 
prisoner — Status of Paul’s judges — Caesar’s bar — Spain and Rome — 
Prison life — The road to Ostia — Earth and Heaven 582 

XXX. 

JOHN. 

THE VISION OF THE PARADISE OF GOD. 

Pilgrim Standfast — The son of thunder — The Jordan valley — Following 
the Master — Salome and her kindred — Sons of Salome — Youth of St. 
John — Zebedee — John the calm ideal — James the prototype of martyr- 
dom — The chosen three — Mater Dolorosa — The risen Lord — Galilee — 
Jesus by the sea — The happy home at Jerusalem — Martyrdom of St. 
James — His burial — John sitting in the council — John at Ephesus — 

The early fathers’ picture of John — The three epistles — The isle Pat- 
mos — Persecution under Domitian — The rock of exile — Sabbath morn- 
ing — The watch tower of the Church of God — The voice on Patmos — 

The Lion of Judah — The song of the saints — Succession of Nerva — • 
Recall of John — The completion of the canon of Scripture — Evening 
of life — The last apostle called home — John lies dead in Ephesus — 

The paradise of God... 606 





CAIN AND ABEL. 


THE GENESIS OF RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE. CAIN THE BIGOT 

ABEL THE BELIEVER. 


AN from his narrow outlook over the world studies and 
classifies the phenomena of his fellow-men in a hundred 
different forms : he talks of races, creeds, colors, and pe- 
riods; of Greek and barbarian; and again divides and 
subdivides. 

The Lord God, with the sweep of infinite vision, regards each 
eternity-bound soul with an eye single to its unchangeable destiny. 
Before him the countless generations separate into two great bands, 
as they shall stand on the mighty day of his last assize; those who 
have accepted justification in the Beloved, and those who have 
clung to their own righteousness, or have “ cared for none of these 
things.” 

From the very earliest history of the race we mark this distinc- 
tion. When Eve, our mother, had two sons at her side, they were 
the types and leaders of these two forever-divergent lines of hu- 
manity. Of these babes, who learned in the land of Eden, 
but outside of the Paradisaic gate, the language of infancy from 
the pair who had never been children, one was a saint of God, 
the other a rebel sinner. 

And, as a picture of what should come to pass in all the history 

of the ages, we find the first parents seeing and judging, not as 
, 25 



26 


CAIN AND ABEL. 


God ; and the sinner Cain so comporting himself through a long 
course of years that he is accounted a true child of glory. It is 
the forever-repeated story — echoed in Samuel’s choice among 
Jesse’s sons, and in the arguments of Job’s three friends — of man 
drawing his conclusions from his own perverse idea, and from some 
shining outward show, and God gazing unchallenged and unde- 
ceived upon the secret heart. 

Adam and Eve, each perfect in kind, but not in degree or 
attainment, forfeiting their high estate, passed weeping out of the 
Edenic portal and the Edenic dispensation ; beyond them lying four 
other dispensations, through which humanity must wander wearily 
before the heir of the Universe should come into his own again. 

These, our parents, had a glorious promise, the shining sun of 
their hope, to light their troublous way, and they looked for its 
immediate realization. They could not apprehend that a thousand 
of our toilsome, earthly years are to our Father as a watch in the 
night; that all time is present to him, while before us it stretches 
a boundless future. The sorrowing pair did not know that gene- 
rations must die like the falling of autumn leaves, and centuries 
be added to centuries before the Deliverer should come to enter 
into his priesthood by the sacrifice of himself ; and centuries more 
before he should claim his kingdom and bruise the Serpent unto 
death. 

We are not to suppose that those who had sat under the shadow of 
the tree of life, who had talked with God in the garden, and the shrine 
of whose worship was the glory between the Cherubim, keeping the 
way to their lost home, were left to grope blindly in the dark 
regarding their Redeemer. They expected a personal Saviour, 
divinity in the flesh ; they apprehended the God and man two dis- 
tinct natures mysteriously united in one personality. This they 
knew assuredly by a direct revelation, for they had no God of 
history or Providence to look to, and what they knew of him must 


CAIN AND ABEL. 


27 


have been unfolded by himself. We see that they expected the 
human flesh and nature in their Jehovah, else Eve would not 
have seen him in her new-born son ; while we are equally sure 
they apprehended his divinity , because the terms of salvation were 
the same for them as for Others — there is no name given but that 
of the God-man, whereby men may be saved ; and Paul speaks of 
the faith of Abel as identical with that of the Church after the 
days of Jesus. 

But it was not necessary that the long ages of preparation for 
his advent should be unfolded ; for it is not for us to know the 
times or the seasons which the Father hath kept in his own hand ; 
nor was it important that they should be taught the wonder of his 
conception ; that was the destined lesson of a later day. All that 
was needful they were told. God, co-equal Son of the Father, 
coming in the flesh to vindicate his sovereignty, to save the souls 
of his chosen, to subdue the revolted earth unto himself. Having 
learned this much, our parents’ ardent desire outran the stately 
progress of the divine intention, and grasped at immediate restora- 
tion. They did not yet realize the tremendous consequences, the 
full importance of their transgression. 

The finite has never yet, can never compass an expression for 
the infinite: it is not in man to invent a name for his Creator, 
upon which that Creator will set the seal of his acceptance. 
No more was such power in her, the mother of the living. God 
must first have revealed himself to Eve as Yahveh, Jehovah, the 
Angel of the Covenant, before she could so denominate him on 
whom her hopes were set. 

When Eve first looked upon her man-child, her anxiety was 
mother of her confidence, that here was the Deliverer, and she 
cried, “ I have borne a man, the very Jehovah.” It was the 
mother love and hope expressed in its most unlimited degree. 
Mothers even yet have immense hope, and reach immense disap- 
pointment. 


28 


CAIN AND ABEL. 


We cannot be shocked at Eve’s language or expectation when 
we feel how her knowledge of time was limited, as well as her 
knowledge of the degree in which humanity was to have part in 
the person of the Mediator. Her language holds a subjective 
truthfulness, and the strong light of her hope. The bitter, the 
terrible disappointment of our first parents in this their son was 
a sharp portion of their ordained punishment. 

But there was no immediate awakening to the truth. 

On the birth of Abel we find our first mother in a different 
frame of mind. She calls him not the very God, but the perisha- 
ble! Abel. 

We wonder whether by this time the slow physical development, 
the weakness, or the traces of human depravity in her eldest-born 
had discouraged her; whether she named her second son perisha- 
ble , because she esteemed him without the divine element of his 
brother ; or whether, having been possessed of the Coming One, 
she thought no other worthy of her rejoicing. 

We cannot tell ; but we know that here, as elsewhere, God chose 
the weak things to confound the mighty, and the despised to put 
to nought the pride of men. 

There is no doubt that the mother’s idea of her two sons entered 
largely into their training. God can make use of every foolish- 
ness of human nature to further his own designs, and in these 
brothers he was to set forth a lesson for all coming years. 

The primary duty which God assigns a married pair is the 
training of their children. It is evident that this is the first affair 
of their lives, because of all their possessions to which they can 
put their hands the children are immortal, and their training is 
work of weal or woe for eternity. Now-a-days we find the cares 
of business, the laws of custom, the diversions of fashion, putting 
the education of the children out of its legitimate pre-eminence. 
Adam and Eve had no such cares and customs, and we doubt not 


CAIN AND ABEL. 29 

that they gave themselves ardently to the culture of the first chil- 
dren of the race. 

Here, too, often we are treated to low views of the mental, 
moral, and religious standing of the first household. Forgetting 
that the race, like the stream and the Church, is purest nearest its 
source, the scholar no less than the homilist has frequently given 
currency to opinions which are as opposed to the laws of our na- 
ture as they are contrary to the direct teachings, or the legitimate 
inferences of Scripture. 

Equally doubtful have been our estimates of their means of in- 
struction. Theirs were the halcyon days of humanity, and they 
themselves, regarded in the light of their early promise, and their 
unrivalled advantages, its brightest flowers. 

How then shall we account for the character of Cain ? What 
was the antecedent preparation which, despite so many and great 
rea training influences, culminated in the ruin of the hopes and 
pei.ce of the first family ? 

We have spoken of maternal disappointments ; and we opine 
th.’Lt Adam and Eve, like many other parents, worked out much 
of the destruction of their own hopes. We frequently see parents, 
by taking no means or the wrong means to secure the fulfilment 
of their high aims, coming short altogether, and breaking their 
hearts over their broken dreams ! 

In explication of this, we must turn to Cain’s supposed mission 
and the central idea of his earliest education. In this study we 
may find perhaps that Cain, like Jacob and some other sons, re- 
ceived more from his mother than her blessing. 

The sorrows of their earthly exile, and the bitter sense of high 
offending against their God, filled the lives of Adam and his wife 
with the cry, caught up by Paul, “Who shall deliver me from the 
body of this death ? ” and stung them to put the most generous 
interpretation upon the one promise given for their consolation. 


30 


CAIN AND ABEL. 


Thus they assigned Cain his mission, in their eagerness running 
before the face of Providence. Thus think Luther, Philippi, 
Tayler Lewis, Lange, Edwards, and many others. 

When the sons grew to manhood, to Cain were given the privi- 
leges of birthright. He, as the eldest born, was the legitimate 
proprietor of the earth, and took his father’s earliest avocation, 
the tilling of the ground. He was also trained in expectancy of 
the religious headship ; and the worship of the Lord was the occa- 
sion of the real unfolding of his character. 

u It is very probable,” says Edwards, “ that sacrifice was insti- 
tuted immediately after God revealed the covenant of grace as the 
foundation on which the custom of sacrificing was built. That 
promise was the first stone laid towards this glorious building, the 
work of redemption ; and the next stone was the institution of sac- 
rifices, to be the type of the great sacrifice.” 

Now upon Cain, as the future head of the family, the priesthood 
would devolve ; he should lead the worship of the household of 
earth in this divinely appointed way. The position in itself was 
sufficient to keep a man humble, reminding him constantly of his 
sin and the sin-offering ; but if his over-eager parents taught him 
that he was the foreordained seed, to bruise the serpent’s head, and 
regain Paradise ; if he looked on himself as the strong intercessor, 
whose arm should bring salvation to his parents and his brother, 
here was a false idea, sufficient to insure his ruin and the double 
disappointment of parental wishes. 

However great the religious privileges of Cain — and they were 
incalculable — however grand his mental superiority, yet continuous 
training in his parents’ belief that he was the Promised One, and 
its logical sequence of personal holiness and infallibility, would 
pervert the highest gifts, and press the rarest attainments into the 
service of bigotry. 

Whenever Adam, “ God’s long-loved husbandman,” talked of 


CAIN AND ABEL. 


31 


his fair, lost garden ; whenever the mother of men grew discour- 
aged with her strange lot, fugitive from Paradise, and in melan- 
choly was 

“ like a spirit strayed who lost the way, 

Too venturesome among the farther stars, 

And hardly cares, because it hardly hopes, 

To find the 1 way to Heaven : ” 

would be suggested to their son his high destiny as their restorer 
and avenger. The loftiest aspirations, the most soul-subduing 
anticipations, the richest faith and piety left to humanity, would be 
thus perverted to minister to the egoism of Cain. 

Theudas, Mahomet, Pius IX., and a host of others have risen 
to the summits of fanaticism with far less claim to a heavenly 
mission than Cain could show. 

Taught in the spirit of his mother’s words, and viewing his 
mission in the full sense and solemnity with which they announced 
it to him, there could be no limit to the prerogatives which in 
time he would arrogate to himself. To him would of right belong 
the pre-eminence by a law of heaven. 

Supremacy in morals and in religion, with full authority to 
regulate and protect their interests, has ever been the slogan of 
fanatics. To guide and guard his family in the worship of God, 
gain his favor, claim and secure the honors of a Deliverer, as pro- 
jected by poor human reason, and seen in the light of his own 
fancy, was very probably the fatal ambition of Cain. 

Parents often come to realize the fallacy of some cherished idea ; 
and bitterly to lament some error in their conduct to and training 
of their children, so late that an uncontrollable impetus has sent 
those children on a course of evil doing. Long after the parent 
has bemoaned his folly or his crime, he is forced to harvest its 
bitter increase ; he awakes to truth while his child is blinded still ; 
the beloved son is the victim of his father’s short-comings, and 
revenges it upon that father’s head. 


32 


CAIN AND ABEL. 


As Cain grew to manhood, Adam and Eve, who carried 
golden memories of hours when God walked with them, who knew 
what the veiled glory of Deity was like, found in their son only 
humanity without divinity ! Lo, he was like their fallen and fal- 
lacious selves ; there may have been no overt act of wrong, but 
they who had held communion with spirits from on high saw that 
their son possessed the taint of the transgression that had lost them 
Paradise ; he was not like God, who had questioned and con- 
demned them, and even while condemning had consoled ! He 
was not like the angels, bright servants of his will ; he was not 
even like themselves when they dwelt in Eden. 

But while they awoke to a realization of this truth, their son 
grew more confirmed in misbelief. 

Meanwhile Abel, the younger brother, was proving that human 
nature thrives best in lowliest places. He had not been taught to 
trust in himself; faith had been the lesson of his infancy, and 
faith reaching past his elder brother, took hold on God. His 
mother had called him “ a vapor,” “ vanity,” “ a breath.” His 
name, instead of crowning him with glory, like that of his elder 
brother, told of the shortness of his life, the insufficiency of his 
strength, or the fact that for him, younger brother of the all-suffi- 
ciient deliverer, was reserved no mission upon earth. His name, 
however, did not rob him of his immortality; vanity as he was, 
ho should endure forever, and he reached after his eternal home, 
and rested his love upon the Everlasting Father. Abel, the 
vapor, drawn up to heaven as the dew is exhaled by the sun, 
comes again like that dew descending to bless the ages with the 
record of his faith and his acceptance. 

Excluded from the hope of personal honor, as expected by his 
brother, and which formed in that primitive society the only 
object of ambition; with a mind left singularly free to follow the 
teachings and worship of the True Deliverer, wandering alone 


CAIN AND ABEL. 


33 


with his sheep, with no care or prospect to drive from his mind 
the legends of Eden, the converse of the King of kings, and the 
promise of the blessing yet to be, there fell to the lot of Abel the 
happiest encouragements to faith and humility. 

Thus far back on the very verge of human history stand two 
grandly representative men — types ever after of our own race in all 
that is dark and conflicting and holy and peaceful. Educated 
and inspired by sights and sounds which will probably never be 
repeated short of millennial days, they lived and moved and died, 
and dying left a personal contrast so sharp and conspicuous that 
it is marvellous that all the world under its influence has not been 
saved from that religious intolerance before whose door lies the 
blood of righteous men that has flowed from Abel to the present, 
a dark stream “ crying unto God from the ground.” 

To these two brothers belonged traditions undimmed by time, 
and unequalled since the morning stars sang together, of their 
ancestral Paradise, with its bright river, whence flowed four royal 
streams in beds of gold and gems. There were fruits and flowers 
of which Hesperides is but a faintly remembered dream ; pleasures 
were there which never palled upon the senses ; conscience un- 
challenged, and singing sweetly in the bosom, and above all, and 
including all, as the atmosphere in which we live and move, the 
benedictions of the Father, in his gifts and in his presence. 

These memories of their forfeited home, together with the cause 
and incidents of their exile, and the promise and means of restora- 
tion, formed a staple of instruction which others of earth’s chil- 
dren, however favored, have never known. Obviously we must 
consider their character in the light of their singular parental 
training, and their ineffable surroundings. 

We are apt to misjudge the character of Eve’s first-born in the 
light of subsequent events. We see him a murderer, a fratricide; 
the obstinate rebel who will not yield when God stoops to reason 
3 


34 


CAIN AND ABEL. 


with him ; who does not feel penitence ; who is merely in horror 
of consequences when his sin has found him out. We regard him 
with anger or disgust, we condemn him from the beginning, and 
neglect to see that if Cain had lived in the present day he would 
have doubtless been, until the direful moment of his fall, “ a fair 
and flourishing” professor of religion. 

Until the day when, in fierce wrath, Cain slew his brother, he 
had had no great temptation, and had consequently been guilty of no 
great sin. In his own way he was a religious man ; he had a zeal 
for God, he had made up his own mind why and how God ought 
to be worshipped, and he was ready to prescribe rules for men in 
their service, and for Deity in his acceptance. We hold Cain the 
very prince and exponent of moralists. In his soul lay, planted 
maybe by paternal hands, the root of self-righteousness, which 
should flower into deadly poison ; but its leafage was goodly to the 
eye ; Cain was the industrious cultivator of the earth, the preci- 
sian in worship, the self-constituted example for succeeding genera- 
tions. God, recognising Cain’s lofty position as a landmark of 
the ages, took the most efficient and summary means to show how 
poor a thing is self-righteousness, how cruel, unholy, and heaven- 
condemned that intolerant religion of the letter that would force 
all mankind to its own measure; and how frail is that morality 
that is not established upon divine grace. 

God had already set forth the grand principle that without 
shedding of blood is no remission of sins. There has been sug- 
gested the fanciful idea that Abel killed the firstlings of his flock, 
that wearing their skins for his covering he might typify himself 
as clothed upon with the righteousness of his Mediator; but this 
is aside from the present theme. Doubtless the dead lamb showed 
forth death as the necessary and unavoidable consequence of sin ; 
the flowing blood showed that, whereby sin can alone be washed 
away ; the innocent victim proclaimed that the sinless might and 


CAIN AND ABEL. 


35 


would die for the guilty. Abel laying his hand upon the lamb 
to slay it, laid in spirit his sins upon the Lamb of God : from 
time immemorial we find the lamb the ordained sin-offering, and 
with such sin-offering, Abel, the sinner, came up before the pre- 
sence of his Maker. 

But how came Cain ? 

He came with an offering which God afterwards not only per- 
mitted, but commanded to be brought to his altar ; but Cain 
brought it in an order of his own. Cain brought the fruit of the 
ground, a thank-offering — but he- brought it first, and brought 
it only. 

Now a thank-offering is well-pleasing unto God, provided it 
be preceded by a sin-offering. Our soul should bless the Lord for 
all his benefits ; but the benefits must be recognized as flowing to 
us through the grace of Jesus, our Saviour, our Sin-offering. 

Cain had, as he considered it, no sins to be done away. 

At first, as he offered no opposition to his brother’s form, and 
had doubtless seen it used before, he may have felt perfectly will- 
ing to have his parents and his brother recognize themselves as 
sinners, and shed blood as a token of their guilt, need, and self- 
abnegation. Or, Cain may have arrogated to himself the right of 
decision as to the mode of worship, and have concluded that its 
end was thanks rather than petition ; that the unbloody offering 
was less cruel, and every way more excellent than the bloody ; 
and that man was to be his own judge as to what he should bring 
before his God. 

Here, then, the two brothers appeared before the flaming Sword- 
symbol between the cherubim keeping the way of the tree of life, 
to have the guiding principles of their hearts tested by their 
Maker. They are the models and leaders of all who have wor- 
shipped before God, from that day until the present. Christ 
describes their exact counterparts four thousand years later : 


36 


CAIN AND ABEL. 


“ Two men went up into the temple to pray ; the one a Pharisee, 
the other a Publican. And the Pharisee stood, and prayed thus 
with himself : Lord, I thank thee that I am not as other men 
are.” Here is the thank-offering, here is Cain. “ And the Pub- 
lican, standing afar off, would not so much as lift his eyes up to 
heaven, but stood and smote upon his breast, saying, Lord, be 
merciful to me a sinner ! ” Here is the spirit of Abel, and the 
desires for a sin-offering. 

The Scripture does not delay, in the very opening of its momen- 
tous records, to furnish us circumstantially a mere murder case, 
such as newspapers are rife with. No, it throws, of high design, 
into tragic prominence the two representative types of society, 
intolerant bigotry, and humble faith; and we see in this early 
record, what history in all ages continues to teach us, and what 
Christ plainly set forth in speech — the inexorable certainty with 
which religious opinions bring the sword, whenever these opinions 
have asserted control over nations or individuals. The conflict 
between Cain and Abel was one of religious conviction ; it was a 
kind of prophecy, a precursor of what must ever be earth’s bit- 
terest chastisement until the end of this dispensation. 

“And God had respect unto Abel and his offering,” — there- 
fore the offering of Abel was no human invention, nor had it a 
finite signification ; it was evidently of Divine prescription. The 
true worship of God can have no human origin ; to be acceptable 
it must be appointed by God himself. “ Oh, that I knew where 
I might find him ! How much less shall I answer him, and 
choose out my words to reason with him/’ — is the cry of our 
humanity. 

Man could no more invent his way of access to God, than he 
could invent the rainbow, or the law of gravitation. “ But unto 
Cain and his offering he had not respect.” The fruit-offering 
was made in a wrong time and spirit. Cain came before the Lord 


CAIN AND ABEL. 


37 


to offer thanks, when he should have brought repentance ; or, at 
best, he came to consecrate himself and his valuable services — 
supposing, like many another, that hereby he did his Creator 
great honor — when he should have looked to the Mediator, and 
craved an atonement. 

To this offering God had not respect. We know not how the 
Divine choice manifested itself, whether in fire descending, in the 
blazing of the cherubim-guarded sword ; whether by the ineffable 
smile of the Highest, or a voice speaking to the worshippers. 
However it was, the election was made, and Cain, called his 
mother’s joyous possession, had lost his birthright and high pre- 
rogative. Through self-righteousness his sin had been made to 
show forth ; through self-confidence he lost his lofty estate. Thus 
goes the history of the world, and thus often the blessing of the 
first-born becomes his greatest curse; if high honor is not girt 
about with humility, if loftiness is not twined to lowliness, the 
normal blessing is transformed to the prerogative of guilt and 
wretchedness. 

And Cain was very wroth. There had been a devil couchant, 
unnoticed heretofore in his spiritual coat of arms; in a twinkling 
it became a devil rampant and domineered over Cain. And now 
we catch a trace of something hereditary. Envy reached up and 
overshadowed the whole heart of Cain. We have here a trait 
similar to that of Eve. 

“ So when deceived, 

She fell by great desire to rise.” 

Or as Milton represents her, as self-communing, thus : 

“ In plain then, what forbids he but to know, 

Forbids us good, forbids us to be wise ? 

Such prohibitions bind not.” 

The “Book of Wisdom ” in the Apocrypha, declares that the first 
motive of the first sin was envy. The first sin of man came from 


38 


CAIN AND ABEL. 


a demoniacal temptation, and manifestly behind that lay some 
early demoniacal sin. This does not explain the essential origin 
of sin, nor how it could arise in the spirit world ; but it lays bare 
its genesis among men; Satan envies against the Highest; he 
also envies unfallen man, and plots his ruin ; and the means to 
his end is to instil in the heart of Eve envy of the knowledge of 
the gods. “ Yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of the tree? 
. . . For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your 
eyes shall be opened ; and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and 
evil.” 

Envy is the root of ambition. Eve envied the knowledge she 
had not, and from this root sprung up ambition, to be as the gods 
knowing good and evil ; from this stem of ambition unfolded the 
leaf and deadly fruit of her disobedience and its train of ills. 

“ Her rasli hand in evil hour 
Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she eat ! 

Earth felt the wound ; and nature from her seat, 

Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe, 

That all was lost.” 

Terrible was her punishment : the loss of the Eden-horne, 
the sharpness of the curse, but not the lightest part of it, was to 
see developed in her son in tenfold strength, her own envy and 
ambition ! 

Every race of man retains the story of our first parent’s loss. 
The Zendavesta tells of Ahiram bringing death to Rajomord, and 
adds the story of Meschia and Meschiane; the Scandinavians 
have the fall of Asen, and the death of Baldur, the beautiful; 
the Greeks embalm the same memory in the legends of Prometheus, 
and the age of gold. Egypt, Ethiopia, China, and Mexico, have 
traces of our heritage and its loss ; but sweet and simple, clear 
and grand in its ungarnished truthfulness, stands the revelation 
of the genesis of sin, and its close successor the genesis of reli- 
gious intolerance. 


CAIN AND ABEL. 


39 - 


The third chapter of the first book in the Bible gives the arclii- 
type of the one, the fourth chapter follows with the form of the 
other. Cain assumes something for himself which God never 
gave him — the right to dictate the manner in which his Creator 
should be approached in worship. Cain has no heart worship, 
but he brings a ritual of his own, and leaving out that which God 
particularly demands, sorrow for sin, and desire for forgiveness y 
he insists upon acceptance. God bends to reason with the work 
of his hands ! 

u Why art thou wroth,” demands the Lord, seeing the face of 
Cain blackened and bowed down, because of his fierce ambition 
to be first, and his envy against the younger brother so strangely 
preferred before him. 

Nor does the Almighty fail to point out the reason of his rejec- 
tion of Cain. He has not done well. He has ordained his own 
way, without taking counsel of God. But now that he has done 
ill, God tells him there is yet a way of escape, i. e. by a Sin-offer- 
ing , by such an offering as Abel had brought, holding in itself an 
intimation of the Bedeemer’s blood, setting forth in type the 
essentials of salvation, atonement by life blood ! 

Cain’s poor offering lay alone, unpresentable, unacceptable, 
holding no intimation of his lost estate and the way of restoration 
— a religion without Jehovah, the Covenant Angel ! A religion 
beginning and ending in thankfulness ! But thankfulness must 
come after self-abnegation, after penitent faith. The view God 
took of that fruit-offering on Cain’s altar was, “this ought ye to 
have done, but not to leave the other undone ! ” 

True Christian thankfulness, the thankfulness accepted of God, 
is grounded upon a right appreciation of the person and work of 
Jesus Christ. 

God continues his argument on this wise: "It is true you have 
held yourself as the future head of this human family; the birth- 


40 


CAIN AND ABEL. 


right is yours, but it is no sinecure ; you forfeit it by marking 
out your own way and worship, ai)d asserting your holiness in the 
presence of the Holy One. Do you wish to regain the birthright; 
to be accepted and preferred ? Take, then, the only way ; come to 
Me in humility with a sin-offering in your hand : lay your guilt 
on Him who shall come — then, and not until then, you shall be 
reinstated, your brother shall be your subordinate ; to you shall be 
his desire, and thou shalt reign over him.” 

Here was a plain way set before Cain, he could be the ruler of 
the coming generation, he could reign over his brother ; but at 
what price ? 

Only by ruling in humility and in the fear of God. Only by 
at every act of worship proclaiming himself a sinner, crying after 
a Christ. 

The price was too heavy. The self-righteous Cain could not, 
would not pay it. 

Instead of humility, hate rose in his heart. His immense pri- 
vilege of being instructed and reasoned with by God, increased his 
condemnation. Thus often do men make their opportunities of 
salvation to be millstones about their necks ! 

He would not yield to his brother ; he would not admit that 
brother’s God-given superiority ; he would not brook the ever- 
recurring insult of seeing a sin-offering made, mutely asserting that 
all men are sinners. He would not escape by God’s proffered way, 
so he chose a way of his own ; and lo, the moralist, the self- 
righteous one, the man who had no sin to cover, becomes a 
murderer ! 

He will not permit this religion of faith, of which Abel is the 
personification, to exist. This hated creed of the sinful soul saved 
by blood-bought grace, by that only, shall not endure. Cain will 
blot it out ; he will strike from his path this man, brother though 
he is, who dares believe and worship in a way different from his own. 


CAIN AND ABEL. 


41 


It was no new thing that Christ told his disciples, “ I come not 
to send peace on earth, but a sword.” For the first Christ-promise 
to the first family woke the deadly feud, and wet the ground with 
^ brother’s blood. 

This was the first war, and it was a religious war. True, there 
was but one engaged on a side, but that took two-thirds of the 
men on the face of the earth ; judged by this comparison, it was a 
very great war indeed. It also continued until one side — and that 
the right one — was completely blotted from existence. 

Cain may have considered that in this achievement he had got- 
ten the better of God, in having destroyed his favored worshipper. 

The result was only to show that all power, all resources, are 
in the keeping of the Eternal One, and that his cause can never 
perish. The voice of Abel’s blood cried to God from the ground. 
God might have revivified that gory corpse. In place of that, 
he raised up another seed to Adam, instead of Abel whom Cain 
slew: Seth the righteous, a man in the spirit and power of Abel. 

From Abel began the noble army of martyrs. His death which 
appeared a defeat, Was the inception of victory. The beginning 
of Old Testament history is marked by the death of Abel for his 
faith ; the New Testament shows us the bloody deed — its counter- 
part, in a more awful form — the murder of Jesus the God-man ; 
thence flows the purple tide of martyr blood across the earth, 
but like the Danube strewn with the ashes of Huss, it carries 
life wherever it goes ! Every drop of this blood is seed of the 
Church. 

Out of this strife between brothers before the altar of God, in 
the land where the sword of the Lord glowed between the cheru- 
bim, have come the motive and the coloring of all the wars in the 
world’s history. 

The altar, the centre of faith and pious act, from that hour be- 
came the centre of the terrible and the destructive, for it is the 


42 


CAIN AND ABEL. 


religious idea that in some shape or another is the motive power 
of humanity, in even its worst developments. 

In the wars of the present day, religion is more an impelling 
principle than is generally thought ; unwind the twisted threads 
of national ambition and political intrigue, and among them, per- 
haps strongest of all, if most hidden, we shall find the religious 
idea. 

The more clearly Cain has his wrong set before him, the more 
obdurate does he become ; the moralist having the saving efficacy 
of his morality questioned, changes in an instant to the fanatic. 
Here is a right creed, and a wrong creed ; and it is at once ap- 
parent that they cannot exist in peace together. 

It is also noteworthy that the aggression is from the side, from 
the creed, that is in the wrong. 

Christ did not say he came “ to bring not peace but a sword,” 
because his followers should push their doctrines by the sword. 
But because evil cannot permit truth to flourish unassailed at its 
side. Error demands all the world as the legitimate territory of 
its growth, and attacks with the sword the Christ-kingdom when- 
ever it lifts up its head. 

But though religious wars are horrible evils in themselves, they 
are not necessarily evils in their results. There are some plants 
that grow into best strength and beauty by being thoroughly well 
pruned, and we find the church striking deep its roots, spreading 
and establishing itself under the very influence of religious perse- 
cution. Thus God turns the wrath of men unto his own high 
praise. 

“ It must needs be that offences come, but woe unto that man by 
whom the offence cometh ! ” 

When Cain was wroth his countenance fell. God set his mark 
on Cain. There has been much discussion as to what this mark 
was. When Cain was angry his lowering brow, and features de- 


CAIN AND ABEL. 


43 


prived of the inner light of peace and hope, revealed his earth- 
born passion. When he slew his brother, darker grew the traces 
of his misery and sin. Sin writes its history on the human face ; 
it wrote its painful and pitiful lines upon the countenance-fallen 
Cain. 

“ From thy face shall I be hid ! ” cries Cain, feeling his birth- 
right and his celestial inheritance lost forever. 

He wanders forth from the Eden-land, but not alone ; for while 
his mother rejects him as the destroyer of her hopes, and the 
murderer of her son, his wife cleaves to him and shares his 
hopeless exile. 

Cain and Abel were not men merely for the age in which 
they lived, they were the grand exponential religionists who ap- 
pear in every generation. Abel is the man who can give up father, 
mother, brother, life, everything, for his faith ; who seals his be- 
lief with his blood, and dying rises into higher being. He is the 
heroic spirit which shall never perish, which lives in many ages, 
when it is not called into extreme action. There are men who 
could and would die for conscience sake, who are not ordained to 
do so; but when occasion demands men to sutfer to the bitter 
end for a principle, there are men ready to meet the emergency ; 
just as when Elijah thought the fear of the Lord lost, and lo, 
there were seven thousand hero souls in Israel who had not bowed 
the knee to Baal. 

Cain is the relentless bigot, who shall assert himself until the 
end of time. He is the man who lays down a pattern of his 
own, and is resolved to cut all men to fit it. He considers 
every variation from his own standard an aspersion cast upon 
his judgment, and a doubt of his future safety. 

In the present day the spirit of Cain may be by strong measures 
repressed for a time, but it is neither dead nor asleep, it is biding 
its opportunity. Though the Cain spirit may not now have the 


44 


CAIN AND ABEL. 


power and the daring to develop as it did when the valleys of 
Piedmont were full of corpses; when blood flowed over the 
Netherlands like the flood the hardy Hollanders let in from the 
sea; when Philpot and Latimer were led to the stake; when 
Bartholomew’s Massacre appealed to Heaven for vengeance ; or 
when it pursued men like wild beasts in the fastnesses of Scotland; 
it is still ubiquitous, and shall live until the Son of Man comes in 
his glory. 

In the study of men and times we must ever estimate this spirit 
of religious intolerance, this dominant, autocratic spirit of creed 
and form, at what it is worth, as a leading idea, and a tremendous 
power in society. 

' The Bible takes up great themes and questions in their order. 
Creation is the first grand fact before us, and it is explained as far 
as need be. Sin, in its cause, its effect and its antidote, is handled 
next ; and, third theme, comes the rise, the development and the 
animus of religious intolerance. It is set before us as something 
ever to be met, to be endured ; to serve us, as we may wrest from 
it the sharp, sure means of arriving at a purer devotion, a loftier 
faith, a more abundant reward. 

'Differences in sect may be needful and beneficial to our motley- 
minded human race; these can exist without the bigotry that 
would force our creed upon our brother, whether he will or no. 
The diverse sects may cordially unite in the evangelization of the 
world ; in philanthropic work, in deeds beautiful in the sight of 
Heaven, the succor of the weak and poor. 

“ For one in generous thought and deed, 

What mattered in the sufferer’s sight 
The Quaker matron’s inward light, 

The Doctor’s mail of Calvin’s creed ? 

All hearts confessed the saints elect 
Who, twain in faith, in love agree, 

And melt not in an acid sect 
The Christian pearl of charity ! ” 


CAIN AND ABEL. 


45 


These fifteen verses of the fourth chapter of Genesis mean very- 
much more to the student than to the casual reader of Scripture. 
Take the seventh verse : if here hattoth is translated not sin, but, as 
it doubtless may be, sin-offering , we get a new light and interest 
at once. “ Sin lieth at the door,” like a wild beast ready to spring ; 
this is the idea of many excellent commentators, and indeed is the 
gist of our common version of the clause. Then the latter portion 
of the verse refers to sin , and here is a wonderful diversity of 
opinion. u Unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt reign 
over him.” 

But read liattoth “ a Sin-offering” Then we have the passage 
running thus : u a Sin-offering lieth at the door,” that is, a a 
remedy is at your door; in your reach; the Sin-offering, a 
vicarious sacrifice provided by God, pregnant with prophetic 
meaning ; the revelation of the “ Lamb of God which taketh away 
the sin of the world.” Here is a method to set Cain at one with 
his Maker ; it is his acknowledgment of soul guilt, and living faitli 
in the Coming One. Now if he accepts that Sin-offering he regains 
his birthright, and has what he claims, supremacy over his brother. 
By serving God, in God’s way with a Sin-offering, Cain becomes 
spiritual head of the family. “ Unto Cain shall be Abel’s desire, 
and Cain shall rule over him ” — the same expression which we 
have in Chap. iii. 16 ; and this meets the idea of Cain, and his 
grand cause of provocation. Bead Sin-offering instead of “ sin ” 
and we have God preaching a full gospel to Cain ; giving him 
great light, and every opportunity of restoration. But if we read 
merelv “ sin,” we have God uttering a mere truism, and talking 
aimlessly with Cain, without suggesting any remedy in his direful 
exigency. 


II. 


ENOCH. 

THE PREACHER OF THE RESURRECTION. 


HE name of Enoch brings before us a very wonderful page 
in the history of the Church and the World. Enoch 
lived in the middle period of the antediluvian dispensa- 
tion ; half way between the fall and the flood. His 
dwelling was in Eden — “ the land of delight.” Eastward in this 
land, the kindly Father had planted his children’s blissful 
dwelling, “with every tree pleasant to the sight, and good for 
food ;” when they had sinned, He, who is just as well as generous, 
took the abode from them, for a season. The curse of sin rested 
on the Eden territory, causing it to yield its best things only to 
the hand of toil, and spontaneously to produce the thorns and 
thistles emblematic of the perverted course of nature ; and even 
yet it was a glorious land. Amid it stood untouched by blight, 
the temple, the holy of holies of that day, the garden beautiful 
exceedingly ; hedged about with thick trees ; guarded at the gate 
by cherubim ; shining in the night time in softened glory, like the 
pillar of fire, which later came to lead the people in the wilderness ; 
in the day its splendors veiled by purple and silver mist, like the 
pillar of the cloud : and there the exiled race knew their Jehovah 
walking — He whose dwelling was not then in the flesh, but who 
disdains not to tabernacle upon the earth. 

The name of Enoch is made to signify the “ devoted,” the 
40 



ENOCH. 


47 


“ mysterious,” the “ learned : ” all of which have a singular fitness ; 
but, as says Tayler Lewis, “ In general little reliance can be placed 
on the etymological significance of these early names.” In the 
Koran he is called Edris. 

The fifth chapter of Genesis contains the “ generations of Adam” 
from our first parent to Noah. Let us begin by considering that 
in this chronology we find embalmed the line of the faithful. 
"We must not look on it as simply the record of successive first 
born sons, but the list of those who received the birthright, in 
virtue, rather of faith, than primogeniture. Some undoubtedly 
were the eldest born : this explains the unevenness in the birth 
figures, the ages of the father varying from sixty-five to one 
hundred and eighty-seven years. 

Says Tayler Lewis : “ It was the line of the pious, of those who 
had the spiritual birthright ; the idea is unwarranted that each 
was a natural first born.” 

At the head of this chronological table stands God : not merely 
as creator, but as parent. So writes Luke : “ Adam, which was the 
son of God.” “ Not without a purpose,” says Gerlach, “ does holy 
writ record the divine origin at the very apex of the species.” If 
in all time since the first singing of the morning stars, there had 
been no need shown for this clear statement whence we came, 
such need has been fully developed in the nineteenth century, by 
those gross philosophers, who throwing aside the glorious prestige 
of our likeness to and paternity in the Highest, proclaim man the 
development of Simiadse ; as if He, who hung worlds in space, and 
with delicate design wrought the lilies of the field, and the 
wonders of the butterfly’s existence, when He came to crown 
creation, to set in the midst of his work some one to apprehend 
it, and grow by it, could do no better than detail an ape ! But the 
theory is no' new one. Here indeed is man’s demon-grotesque, 
running on as ever parallel with the grand, or the pathetic. 


48 


ENOCH. 


Again this fifth chapter of Genesis is the great battle-field of 
life and death. “ He died/’ repeated and re-repeated after each 
name — but one. Under the history running a mighty monotone — 
memento mori! as the sound of the sea waves undertones the 
lighter echoes of the shore. 

Where so fine a place to set the fact of triumph over death 
as here, right in the midst of the annals of its sway ? Thus in the 
very centre of those, who after fighting for long centuries, succumb 
at last to the tyrant of the race, stands one who is conqueror, 
through that higher conqueror, the coming Christ. 

We have noted the name, time, and dwelling of this shining 
light among the patriarchs ; now we proceed to give some 
suggestion of his wonderful surroundings, and advantages. When 
Enoch was three hundred years old, he had about him every 
Antediluvian Patriarch but Noah. Adam was a hoary old man, 
within eight years of his death, and Lamech, Enoch’s grandson, 
was a promising youth past forty. 

There are no physiological grounds for demanding so retarded 
a manhood for the antediluvians, as some would claim ; that they 
lived long, does not force the belief that they matured late. The 
blood of the race was untainted ; it was full of the vigor its pro- 
genitor had breathed in under that tree of life, of which, if he had 
eaten, he would have lived forever ; the sons of that elder day 
pursued their course with no false philosophy ; life was to them a 
benediction from God ; they cherished it ; they enjoyed it ; and 
these men, whose names are immortalized in the sacred word, 
were filled full of that faith and godliness which are ever nature’s 
best preservative. They were men with a mission, men of high 
destiny ; there was no time for them to lay down the harness 
early, they must live out their dispensation, teaching lessons, and 
being in themselves types which even yet we but dimly appre- 
hend. 


ENOCH. 


49 


Men, in the arrogance of their nineteenth century wisdom, have 
been wont to take too low a view of the culture, scientific and 
religious, of the people before the flood. 

Let us consider first, that they had among them Adam and 
Eve, who were not only children, but pupils of God himself. 
According to the older theologians, Adam was a man of surpass- 
ing knowledge. Later teachers, very much in the spirit of the 
present day, in which the rosy schoolboy feels fully competent to 
teach his parents, have inclined to the notion that, in the child- 
hood of the earth, men were babes in knowledge. 

When we consider what advances in learning can be made now 
by one, who, withdrawing his mind from the distracting follies of 
life, diligently applies himself to study for twenty, thirty, fifty 
years, and that, while health continues, the mind does not deteri- 
orate with age ; but, as say Goethe and Coleridge, “ power to con- 
jure up lively sentiments is in no measure lost as men grow in 
years ; whereas, ability to utter them forcibly is vastly increased 
let us imagine what man might do, and how his intellect might 
reach high and compass lofty themes, during the study and con- 
templation of eight, and even nine centuries. To-day, man does 
not need so long a period for his intellectual development ; he has 
not to begin at the beginning of learning ; he finds an easy path, 
well trodden by his predecessors ; he has the work of others ready 
to his hand ; he needs not first to make his tools and then use 
them, but they are prepared and fitted in his grasp. This is 
providential, that with so few days to labor, labor is facilitated ; 
if not, the wisest among modern men would be fools indeed. We 
are speaking now of the knowledge which especially concerns and 
takes hold upon earth ; and of the advance of this we may catch 
a wonderful glimpse in the memorial of some years later — the 
Pyramid of Cheops — built 800 years before Moses. This is the 
enduring witness of the wonderful advancement of these early 
4 


50 


ENOCH. 


generations, in the natural and exact sciences. Mathematicians 
and astronomers of the present age have gone to study at the feet 
of this prodigious monument of the learning of the past ; and such 
exhaustive knowledge of abstruse points has it revealed, that there 
have been those who have considered the Pyramid of Cheops a 
product of especial revelation. Enoch missed Noah by sixty-nine 
years. Noah lived to see the Pyramid of Cheops sharply defined 
against the skies of Egypt. When we meditate on the opportu- 
nities and advancement of these men of the earliest antiquity, we 
must dissever our thoughts from the fact of the present, that “ one 
generation passeth away, and another cometh,” and must consider 
how successions overlapped; so that in the chief part of the times 
before the flood, these nine cotemporary generations exchanged 
their reminiscences of the past, their discoveries, their explanations 
of things present, and the promises revealed to them of the future. 

But we must look for a moment at a higher wisdom than that 
of earth. In things finite, God gave them time to grow wise ; to 
search out for themselves ; to expand the capacity with which he 
had endowed them. But there is a “ pure and peaceable wisdom,” 
which can only reach us from above ; it has not its spring in our 
spirits; it is the emanation of the Infinite ; it comes t6 us only by 
direct revelation, — now by the written word ; once by him, the 
divine Logos in the flesh ; in this elder history, by the Yahveh- 
Elohim, the Lord God, the Covenant Jehovah, instructing his 
offspring, as afterwards he taught them from the burning bush ; 
in the pillar of cloud and fire ; in the Shekinah on the mercy 
seat ; in the glory upon Sinai. 

Herbert, the sweet singer, catches a choice vision of this happy 
period, and sends forth his yearning in his song : 

“ Sweet were the days when Thou didst lodge with Lot, 

Struggle with Jacob, sit with Gideon, 

Advise with Abraham, when Thy powder could not 
Encounter Moses strong complaints and moan. 


ENOCH. 


51 


“ One might have sought and found Thee presently, 

At some fair oak, or hush, or cave, or well. 

Is my God this way ? No, they would reply ; 

He is to Sinai gone ; as we heard tell.” 

The Greeks and Latins loved to contemplate the fables of the 
Age of Gold. We linger, wooed by the sweetness of these sug- 
gestions of the days when, in the delightsome Eden-land, walked 
the nine Macrobii of the primitive time. 

Theirs was a family life ; they dwelt in households ; they were 
united by ties of kindred. It was a religious life; their chief 
teacher was God ; their best recollection, a state of holiness ; their 
dearest hope, the coming of a Deliverer from Heaven. The 
shrine of their worship, we have every reason to believe, was that 
glory, cherubim-guarded at the Paradisaic gate. 

The ordinary dealings of Providence, reason, and the most 
venerable traditions, teach us that theirs was a scholarly life, a life 
of intellectual appetites and advancement, of the keenest mental 
pleasures, the loftiest pursuits. Who could be a better historian 
than Adam, who had learned of Creation from the Creator, who 
had seen nine centuries with their tragedies ? 

The Mohammedans and later Jews hold that Enoch was a man 
of remarkable scientific attainments. The fictitious “ Book of 
Enoch ” shows the immense knowledge supposed to have been 
reached by this prophet, and the revelations wherewith he was 
favored. 

It was one of the advantages of this primordial school that they 
needed waste no time disputing over phenomena or different appre- 
hensions of things. Facts were facts to them, about which there 
was no question. The structure of the earth, the march of crea- 
tion, the realism of the garden, and the meaning and influence of 
its wonderful trees, were not to be carped over while Adam stood 
among men. So many other great matters which have occupied 
the years and the tomes of scientists and theologians since Christ 


52 


ENOCH. 


was caught up from the Mount of Olives, were open as the day 
to these ancient scholars. 

The record is that Enoch lived sixty-five years and then begat 
a son. After that he walked with God 300 years. Enoch was an 
heir of faith ; he held the spiritual birthright ; he was not merely 
of the godly Sethic line, as diverse from the heaven-daring 
Cainites, but he was of that royal succession, the distinctly named 
progenitors of Christ the Lord. We suppose him then from the 
dawn of reason to have been an humble-hearted worshipper of 
God, leading a blameless life, the example of his brothers and 
sisters, the joy of Jared his father, the choice companion and pupil 
of Seth, Cainan, JMahalaleel, and the others of that glorious 
galaxy. But after a son was born to him, Enoch gained a deeper 
knowledge and a better love ; hitherto he had obeyed and adored 
his Maker, now he was brought into some blessedness of commu- 
nion, some singular nearness to his Lord, so that amid the shadows 
of earth, feeling after him he haply found him, and thenceforward 
walked with him as a man walks with his friend. This change 
from the “ living,” as other good men of the day lived, to the 
“ walking with God,” shows us some marked change in Enoch’s 
inner spiritual experiences. He now possessed a “ permanent view 
of the present Deity, and continually followed after his guidance,” 
says Lange. 

Enoch, the youngest now of these old world patriarchs, became 
wiser than all his teachers ; he shot beyond them in the heaven- 
ward way, and walked there ; but he had by him a companion so 
glorious ; a fellow traveller of such ineffable beauty, and super- 
nal wisdom, that Enoch, in his grand advance of his kindred, was 
meekness itself; was humblest among the sons of earth, as best 
becomes the highly dowered son of heaven. We think of Enoch 
among his seniors, wiser than they, yet modest as Elihu, of whom 
in the days of Job we get a brief glimpse. He has a loftier 


ENOCH. 


53 


spiritual knowledge than his peers ; he unfolds it, yet prefaces it 
with humility. “ I am young, and ye are very old ; I said, days 
should speak, and multitude of years should teach wisdom. But 
there is a spirit in men, and the inspiration of the Almighty 
giveth them understanding. Therefore hearken to me, and I also 
will show you mine opinion.” 

The phrase, “ and Enoch walked with God,” is twice repeated ; 
in the first place it defines his ordinary thought and act for three 
hundred years ; in the second it gives confirmation of his trans- 
lation. 

He walked with God. Here is the assurance of the persever T 
ance and soundness of his piety. He did not flag, nor turn aside ; 
he did not run one while and creep another ; but he walked on, 
in the maturity of his godliness, keeping pace with the will of 
God concerning him. 

He neither feared his path nor desired another : as with Paul, 
things present and things to come, were all as one to him ; all was 
swallowed up in the realized presence of his Jehovah. He walked 
with God not into the wilderness, or the bowers of the garden- 
home out of reach of the affairs of his fellow-men, taken from 
their cares and Society ; he walked with God not in some strange 
trance, some supernatural experience of his flesh on earth, but he 
walked with him in the ordinary practical avocations of his daily 
life. He was not Enoch the hermit saint, but Enoch the family 
saint. He maintained and exemplified that higher walk in the 
bosom of his household, a husband and a father, a glorious proof 
that the married estate can and should be holily maintained. 

Enoch walked with God as his witness: first that there are 
degrees of piety ; that, as in heaven there are angels, archangels, 
principalities, and powers; so in God’s family, the Church, are 
some gifted with clearer views, tenderer sentiments, warmer emo- 
tions, deeper sense of sin, and nearer apprehensions of Christ, than 


54 


ENOCH. 


others. And in this view, it is wonderfully comforting to realize 
that it is not by works of righteousness that we have done ; not 
by the blessed knowledge bestowed upon us, that we are saved, 
but by the blood of Jesus. 

Enoch was also a witness for that mystical kernel of religion, 
its heart of hearts, communion with God. 

He also bore in himself, and exemplified the assurance of the 
higher everlasting life, the “ earnest of the Spirit,” that flows out 
of a life at peace with God. 

Again, Enoch was a type of Christ in his divine human walk ; 
and to all men he is the exponent of rich personal piety. 

All this was Enoph to the Church of that, and of all ages ; in 
himself he was a revelation from God to the Sethic race. This 
was his errand where he dwelt, where 

“ Eden stretched her line 
From Auran eastward to the royal towers 
Of great Selucia, built by Grecian kings, 

Or where the sons of Eden long before 
Dwelt in Telasser ; 

Not that fair field 

Of Enna, where Proserpine gathering flowers, 

Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis 
Was gathered. 

Nor that sweet grove 
Of Daphne by Orontes, and the inspired 
Castalian Spring, might with this Paradise 
Of Eden strive. ” 

But beyond this gracious dwelling Enoch had a mission to an 
apostate race ; to the children of Cain, who held themselves 
diverse from the sons of God, and whose iniquity was coming up 
like a flood, threatening the virtue of the Sethites — precursor of 
the deluge, which blotted out the scars of sin from the sight of an 
angry God. 

We have the Cainitic genealogy in the fourth chapter of Gene- 
sis ; beginning with a murderer, it also ends with one ; Lamech, 


ENOCH. 


55 


the seventh from Adam, was the chronological parallel of Methu- 
selah ; we find him a murderer and a polygamist ; he takes the 
musical instruments of his son Jubal to aid his song of self- 
justification, when with the weapons fashioned by another of his 
sons, Tubal Cain, he had “ slain a young man.” 

From the time when Cain built his city Enoch, and fortified 
himself there, trusting rather to the w T alls his hands had raised, than 
to the promise of God for his safety, his descendants had given 
themselves to the practice of arts, and the firm establishment of 
themselves in their earthly abode. The world-feeling was strong 
in them ; they were at home below ; they had no yearning after 
the city that hath foundations, built by God. They did not seek 
a better country ; this land of Nod was good enough for them. 
The idea of the Cainites was culture , of the Sethites, cultus , or 
worship. The sons of Cain did well for themselves, and men 
praised them ; the children of Seth established themselves by a 
calling “ on the name of the Lord.” 

But the elements of the fall worked in the children of Seth, 
and already, before the days of Enoch, many of those “ sons and 
daughters,” who are mentioned, but not by name, had begun to 
run “ greedily after the error of Cain.” 

In Luke the seventeenth, Christ declares that the occupations 
and manners of the people in Noah’s day were as those of Sodom 
in the time of Lot. He describes the stir and pleasures of a 
worldly population : “ They ate, they drank, they married, and 
were given in marriage.” 

Now, in the seventh generation from Adam, even in Enoch, the 
antediluvian dispensation culminated ; from thence it rushed down- 
ward to its destruction. There were fewer and fewer of the godly 
to withstand the inroads of evil example. So the time had fully 
come, when a Preacher and a Witness should go from God, to 
warn the Cainites of the dangers of their way, and call them 


56 


ENOCH. 


to repentance, and to proclaim to the recreant Sethites what judg- 
ments were at hand. 

Behold now this wonderful preacher ! He has gotten his lesson 
from his God. He believes it with his whole heart ; his prophetic 
eye beholds the advancing doom; his holy anger waxes higli 
against the enemies of the God with whom he walks. He trem- 
bles for the fate of sinners ; he yearns after them, and with 
righteous indignation he chastizes their crimes. 

The Preacher leaves “ the land of delight/’ his kindred, and the 
congenial friendship there surrounding him, and first of foreign 
missionaries, he goes eastward to the land of Nod, “ the land of 
desolation and banishment.” We know no more of this land 
than its name; but wherever Cain went he would have found 
only a land of desolate banishment, filled with the demons of 
remorse, terror and despair. 

We are possessed not only of Enoch’s destination in his mis- 
sion, but of the names of his chief hearers, and the text from 
which he preached to them. 

Eden was a rural, pastoral land ; there they had quiet homes 
scattered over the peaceful plain, instead of cities entrenched and 
fortified for war. In Eden were altars, in Nod were walled 
houses and barricades ; into these entered Enoch in the majesty 
of his embassy from above. To hear him came Irad, “ the towns- 
man,” and Methusael, “the strong man,” Lamech, “ the warlike,” 
Adah, “the beautiful,” and Zillah, “the shadow.” 

Before these stood up Enoch, strong and fearless in his faith ; 
he stretched forth his arms toward heaven, his voice was as the 
clarion, calling to battle : “ Behold, the Lord cometh, with ten 
thousand of his saints ! ” 

Now when the race of Cain heard of His coming, which had 
been so long delayed, they might lift their frightened eyes, expect- 
ing to see heaven opened. But no. Their preacher saw it, like 


ENOCH. 


57 


Stephen, in the years to come. They saw nothing but the un- 
changeable blue, smiling above Cashmere and Armenia, and all 
the joyous cradle-land of the East ! 

But the glorious spectacle unfolded to Enoch was the morning 
of the resurrection ; for who are these legions that accompany 
Jehovah- Jesus? Not angels, but saints; and who are saints, but 
the spirits of just men made perfect? 

He cometh in the glory of his Father and the angels; angels 
shall be about him, and his ministers as flaming fires. But nearer 
shall be the saints . “Know ye not that the saints shall judge 
the world ? ” They come, all their earthly pain but a morning 
mist, which serves to refresh and brighten the day. They come 
to judge those who have derided, despised, afflicted, or slain them. 
“ Blessed and happy is he who shall have part in the first resur- 
rection of the dead.” Let every man be “ striving if by any 
means he may attain thereto!” Far from the world’s faint flush 
of dawning, through the heat and blaze of its day, the darkness 
of its night of desolation, looks this steadfast prophet, who stands 
with his face to the east, and he sees the breaking of the jubilant, 
eternal morning, when the face of the returned Son of Man shall 
make the sun as the glimmer of an expiring taper, and shall brighten 
with splendor the whole circle of the skies. 

So wide a sweep of celestial vision had God given the man 
who “ walked with him,” that even then he looked on past the 
first coming of Christ to Mary’s bosom as a babe in all lowliness, 
to that tremendous day when he shall come in the clouds of heaven 
with hosts of angels at his feet: Enoch beheld his return, like John 
the latest of the seers. “ He cometh in clouds, and every eye shall 
see him ; and all the kindreds of the earth shall wail because of 
him.” 

There stood Enoch between the living and the dead, between 
the race of Seth and the race of Cain ; the sabbatic seventh man, 


68 


ENOCH. 


proclaiming the Resurrection ! Oh, ye sons of Cain, there is more 
in death than dying. The earth cannot cover you from the eye 
of your Maker, he will bring you forth of your covert, and set you 
before his face. “ Behold, he cometh !” For what? Here then 
is the burden of the first prophet’s soul, “to execute judgment.” 

And now Enoch does not fail to proclaim the whole counsel of 
God. If there is to be a judgment he will plainly declare for what. 
Jabal, “the nomad,” may grasp his bow, and Lamech, “ the strong,” 
may frown ; Adah and Zillah, defiant in beauty and in power, 
may sneer, but the swelling current of Enoch’s speech cannot be 
stayed. He cometh, “ to execute judgment upon all, and to con- 
vince all that are ungodly among them, of their ungodly deeds 
which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard 
speeches, which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” 

If at this day, a man should arise in the spirit of Enoch, and 
should thus chastise the ungodly with the rod of his mouth, there 
are few congregations who would endure it — even ' so well as the 
Cainites ! 

But to be just to all, perchance this is because there comes no 
man in all this age who stands so near the Lord as did Enoch, 
who “ walked with him, and was not.” 

Enoch had fulfilled his mission to the Cainitic families ; but he 
had the same message to proclaim among the sons of Seth ; for 
there were many who were walking in the ways of the ungodly. 
W orldliness was growing up among them, a deadly upas ; they, 
sitting under its shade, forgot the garden-home of the past, and 
the eternal city beckoning them towards its golden streets. 

Enoch saw this celestial city ; he had marked well its towers 
and bulwarks; he had counted her gates of pearl, and her 
“twelve foundations fair;” he had seen her King in his beauty in 
the midst of her. Walking in faith here on earth, he had sent on 
his soul to take possession of that blessed abode. He rejoiced in 


ENOCH. 


59 


its light ; to him was borne on every evening breeze the frag- 
rance of the “ royal land of flowers,” 

“ Whose ageless walls are bonded 
With amethyst unpriced, 

The saints build up the fabric, 

And the corner-stone is Christ. 

And through the sacred lilies, 

And flowers on every side, 

The happy dear-bought people 
Go wandering far and wide. 

Jesus the gem of Beauty, 

The God and Man they sing ; 

The never-failing Garden, 

The ever-golden Ring.” 

We are not told what individual converts Enoch made, but he 
could not stem the tide of wickedness that was rising up over the 
habitations of men. Enoch saw men going farther and farther 
astray, he knew that a judgment was imminent; he beheld the 
end of the dispensation approaching. Of this he doubtless assured 
his compeers, and his descendants. 

The influence of the saintly Enoch would be first and most 
deeply apparent in the hearts of his son, Methuselah, and his 
grandson, Lamech. They would treasure up the memory of his 
example, of his prophecies, his warnings, and his instructions as to 
how they might seek the Lord and find him. 

But Enoch was to be, not merely God’s preacher of the resur- 
rection, but he was to be a witness of it in himself. 

Death and the future existence are questions of the deepest 
moment to all men in every age. What can more insure our 
happiness than the certainty that when we and our beloved are 
lost to earth, it will not be, “ dying as the dog dieth,” but it will 
be the beginning of a better and an endless existence. Doubtless 
the antediluvians had been instructed, that dying was but a change 
of state. Adam may have taught them that in his “ flesh he should 
6ee God.” But the Macrobii clung to life, and before them rose 


60 


ENOCH. 


the perpetual “how?” Among them, as among the Corinthians, 
were some who would say, “ there is no resurrection of the dead,” 
and the peevish query, “ How are the dead raised up, and with 
what body do they come ? ” 

God was to make Enoch a sign of the absolute fact. He was 
to mark out his most faithful servant by his most distinguished 
favor. 

Men should no longer question as to the reality of the abode of 
the blessed, when one of themselves had gone thither. Death is 
chastisement, and the bitter fruit of the curse. The disintegration 
of the body is no comfortable anticipation. This Enoch was to 
be spared. 

He was to stand before all ages a sign of the saving power of 
faith. For three hundred and sixty-five years Enoch shared the 
consequences of sin, bearing about a corruptible and dying body. 
Now through the faith of Enoch was to be introduced into the 
world, a fuller faith of the life beyond death. 

There had come a turning point in the life of the world. The 
Sethites now forsook the theocratic pureness of their line, and 
married into the curse-loaded race of Cain ; polluting marriage. 
They wedded not with the blameless daughters of the faith ; but 
they made sensual beauty their love, and moreover followed the 
sin of Lamech, the polygamist, and “ took them wives of all that 
they chose.” 

We come now to the repetition of the important clause, “And 
Enoch walked with God.” Here, it is the preliminary and con- 
firmation of his translation. 

Closer and closer had grown the tie ; nearer the companionship. 
There remained now only to lift Enoch out of earth. He was 
transformed — perchance “ in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,” 
he was clothed upon with the heavenly garment. He walked with 
God on through life ; lo, they came to the gateway between this 


ENOCH. 


61 


world and the next ; a golden portal where none had passed ever 
before, and the walking together extended through it to the regions 
of the blessed, and on earth Enoch “was not.” “Was not, for 
God took him.” 

A strange and solemn protest against the unworthiness of a 
corrupt world. A tender dealing with his servant; a witness 
given by Him who teaches men in the clearest and most excellent 
manner all that is needful for them to know. 

They sought him, as afterwards the sons of the prophets sought 
Elijah. They searched for that blameless example, and wisest 
of all the teachers. 

It is the opinion of Luther, that the Sethites believed Enoch 
had been slain by the children of Cain, and that they received 
an especial revelation concerning what had become of him. 
Enoch was the first of three great phases of the revelation of the 
world beyond, of the higher and unending life — Enoch, Elijah, 
Christ. 

The first removed without death — absent from earth, present 
with the Lord — exhibiting the reality of a future place and state. 

Elijah going up in a whirlwind, escorted by horses and chariots 
of fire ; seen of his servant ; dropping down his mantle from the 
blue distance in which he vanished away. 

Jesus, dead, buried, risen, ascending, blessing his disciples, con- 
versing with them in his human voice, until a cloud receives him 
out of their sight, and angels brought a promise of his return. 

“ He was not,” they missed him ; they sought him mourning. 
“So,” says Luther, “ the disciples missed their Lord, and looked for 
him weeping.” “ Where have ye laid him ? ” “ We trusted that 

it had been he who should have redeemed Israel.” As the apostles 
sought “ the living among the dead,” the Sethites sought Enoch, 
who had been transferred to the land of the living, from among 
the dying in this earthly valley of death. 


62 


ENOCH. 


“ So shines out, in the midst of this narration of the dead, like a 
fair and lovely star, the pleasing light of immortality. Enoch 
confesses another life without death, for out of this world’s misery, 
and without pain of dying, he goes straight to everlasting life.” 

Enoch was the seventh from Adam. Seven is the sacred, the 
Sabbatic number. Moses was the seventh from Abraham ; Phinehas 
the seventh from Jacob, and they correspond to the seventh day, 
the consecrated day of rest. In Enoch, the seventh from Adam, 
the grand climax of the antediluvian period, there may be a shadow- 
ing of the seventh of earth’s thousands of years ; the seventh mighty 
world-period ; and that after six weary lapses of a thousand years, 
laden with sin and death, shall dawn a millennial seventh, when 
Christ shall rule from the river to the ends of the earth, when his 
feet shall stand on Mount Zion, Satan shall be bound, and death 
shall be a memory of the past. “ Blessed are they who shall be 
watching when the bridegroom cometh ! ” 

Enoch was not permitted to see death. His son, Methuselah, 
reached the highest life-period, nine hundred and sixty-nine years. 
We find in this, one evidence of his holy life and conversation ; for 
faith was the great antidote of death. Rich in power, in know- 
ledge, in physical vigor, in a godly paternity, in children, and in 
children’s children, Methuselah, like Moses, stood in the breach 
between God and men, and prayed back the wrath of the Eternal. 
Sixty-nine years after the translation of Enoch, Noah was born, 
and Lamech, mindful of the prophecies of his grandsire, of the ap- 
proaching end of the dispensation, and of God vindicating himself 
among an apostate race, yet evidently not clearly understanding 
them, called his child Noah — “ Consolation,” — saying, “ This same 
shall comfort us concerning our work, and the toil of our hands, 
because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed.” 

Five hundred years lived Noah, and then God gave to him, as 
to his ancestor, a commission as a preacher : not of the resurrection, 


ENOCH. 


63 


but of righteousness, warning men to repent because indignation 
had gone out against them. 

Hoary Methuselah heard the prophecy, but still prayed on ; the 
evil should not meet his eyes. Yet a hundred and twenty years, 
while the ark was building, the most venerable of the sons of men 
proved the efficacy of prayer. He stood among his brethren, as 
Ararat among the Armenian mountains, white with the snows of 
centuries. But when the limit of that long, long life was touched, 
when the white hair of Methuselah was laid in the dust, and the 
voice of his prayer went up no more to the throne of the Highest, 
there was none to “ stay his hand/- and he called unto Noah, 
“ Come thou and thy house into the ark ! ” 

Faithful to the third and fourth generation to those that serve 
him ! Enoch seated on the heavenly hill did not see his descen- 
dants swept away with the floods ordained to avenge the Lord on 
the ungodly ; but he saw them floating safe, shut in by the hand 
of the Lord, from danger and desolation. 

Here end the annals of the Sethic race. From Noah the 
current of humanity divides into three streams, flowing far and 
wide. Noah and Shem, born in the primitive age, holding in 
their blood the vigor of the Macrobians, lived to see the depopu- 
lated earth repeopled. They lived to see Egypt a kingdom build- 
ing landmarks for the centuries ; to see Abraham reviving the 
ancient piety and God-communing ; to see Jacob, who had visions 
of angels, and wrestled with God. 

There has been a wide misapprehension of the Sethic economy; 
it prefigured the New Testament state, and its sons held a faith 
kindred to that of the apostles in the Redemption. Says Luther, 
of these long-lived, grand, and God-distinguished men : “ They are 
the greatest heroes that, next to Christ and John Baptist, ever 
appeared in this world ; and at the last day we shall behold their 
majesty .” 


III. 


ABRAHAM. 

A FELLOW-CITIZEN OF THE SAINTS. 


the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, the Apostle Paul 
strikes the key-note of the life of Abraham. He was on 
earth a sojourner and stranger, travelling to his heavenly 
home. 

God set this princely patriarch in the world, in order that he 
might teach the Church in all coming time, not to expect its 
abiding place below, but to find its citizenship in heaven. In this 
lies the true root of happiness ; amid the perplexities, the buffet- 
ings, the loneliness of the world, shrinking from its uncongenial 
air, and longing with agony of home-sickness for something dearer 
and satisfying, we find true comfort only in this fact, that we have 
here no abiding city ; we are pilgrims, and wayfaring men in the 
midst of the world. The Church is God’s great nomad, and 
Abraham, prince of nomads, is her type. The wanderings of 
Abraham, their cause, their consequences, all find their antitype 
in the Church. 

Abraham was the ninth remove from Shem, in whom was 
retained the godliness and the spiritual birthright of the line of 
Seth. When the three sons of Noah received at their father’s 
altar of burnt-offering their commission, “ Be fruitful and multi- 
ply, and replenish the earth,” Shem and his family settled them- 
selves in Mesopotamia, extending their line from the Red Sea, 
64 



ABRAHAM. 


65 


along the shores of Aden and the Persian Gulf. Theirs were 
Ophir and Havilah, theirs the sacred mountains, theirs the storied 
Tigris and the Euphrates. Doubtless Noah remained, in the sepa- 
ration of his family, with the son likest himself, who was indi- 
cated by God as the heir of his richest inheritance. 

In Northern Assyria, at Arrapachitis, the family of SJiem in 
the covenant line, established itself, but it was emphatically a pil- 
grim family from its inception. Eber, the great grandson of 
Shem, and the progenitor of the Hebrews, was named “ the emi- 
grant,” or “ wanderer ; ” he, without doubt, by divine direction, 
crossed the Tigris, and straying southward, found a new sojourn- 
ing place for his family ; but here he was near the children of 
Ham, a race cursed like the Cainitic line, who worshipped the 
deities of their own imagination. Here dwelt Peleg, at the time 
the 'earth was clearly divided between the worshippers of God and 
of idols, between the theocratic and untheocratic line. In the 
name and time of Reu, we are taught the friendship of God for 
the family he had chosen and dowered with blessing. But this 
early Church dwelt in dangerous places; in the days of Nahor, 
the conflict with the earliest form of idolatry — the adoration of 
fire and the heavenly bodies — was sharp, and the time for another 
migration came with the age of Terah. This household had no 
continuing city ; they were moving by slow degrees toward Jeru- 
salem, the city of peace, and to Mount Zion on earth, as the 
Church still marches onward to the heavenly city, and Mount 
Zion which is above. Close upon the boundaries of Eber’s family 
pressed the Chaldean fire-worshippers, exalting the claims of their 
most subtle creed. They had the traditions of the sword of fire, 
and the fire leaping upon the altar. What of all the visible is . 
more lofty than the marvellous cycle of the heavenly planets, the 
sun and the moon pursuing a majestic way, holding the life of 
earth in their beams, and drawing the floods by their influence? 

5 


G6 


ABRAHAM. 


What more mysterious than fire? — leaping out of an infinitesimal 
spark, kindled often times, men knew not how, by the heat 
unseen, towering to a giant, devouring everything in its reach, 
dying away to nothingness with its vanished spoil, trembling and 
waving sometimes a heat line in mid air, that cannot be caught, 
or followed, or restrained ! The heart of Terali felt the mystic 
spell. He had three sons, the chosen of the Lord, and yet the patri- 
arch faltered in his early zeal and faith, and began to mingle the 
service of the god of fire and the hosts of heaven with his own. 

Thus says the stern Joshua centuries later: “Your fathers 
dwelt on the other side of the flood, in old time, even Terah, the 
father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, and they served other 
gods.” Not Abraham served other gods, for if we take that 
view, we must admit that the Lord permitted the holy birthright 
line to lapse away from his service, which cannot have happened, 
for the doctrine of a remnant must remain ever sure, the little 
bands that have stood up for God on the earth — the salt that 
has preserved an unrighteous world from destruction. Of this 
remnant we find Abel, Seth, Enoch, Methuselah, Noah, Shem ; 
and when Abraham was a young man in his father’s dwelling, 
Noah, his mighty ancestor, remained among men : Noah, who 
was six hundred years old when he entered into the ark — the 
pupil of Methuselah and Jared — who with his sons had gone up 
to worship at the gate of Eden, who had stood by the graves of 
Abel and Adam. With such ancestors and instructors as these 
yet living, and more than all, with that choice of God upon him, 
we cannot for an instant imagine that Abraham swerved from the 
right course of worship. With Terah there was a mingling of 
the true and the false, and in his better moments he may have 
realized this, and struggled with his infatuation. We find Terah 
ever weaker than his princely son. God roused this man with a 
judgment; his is the first case on record where a father saw his 


ABRAHAM. 


G7 


child die a natural death in his early life. In the wealthy Chal- 
dean home, Terah saw Haran his beloved youngest son, sicken 
and expire. “And Haran died in the presence of his father, in TJr 
of the Chaldees, the land of his nativity.” Weeping Terah built 
his darling’s tomb, but he had been warned of God by this judg- 
ment. Doubtless he turned his tear-blind eyes on his remaining 
sons, and exhorted them : “ Let us go : here we have no con- 
tinuing city, we are called southward still, away from this wor- 
ship of fire, away from these seducing children of Nimrod.” The 
little Church prepared for their hegira. Nahor, the second son, 
cleaves to his birth-place ; but Terah takes Abraham, Sarah, and 
the orphan Lot, and they go forth together. The soul of Abra- 
ham rejoices in this exodus, because it is obedience to his Lord ; 
but all the fibres of Terah’s love cling close about Chaldean Ur. 
Every departing step is pain, his life is rooted in his cradle home ; 
there Nahor lives at ease, complacent, yielding a little to his 
neighbors’ worship, and retaining much of his own ; there is that 
tomb dewed with a father’s tears of anguish. O skies that he has 
loved, hills and rolling plains, and fruit bearing trees, and rush 
of waters, that he has known from life’s first dawn! He cannot 
go. In the conflict between duty and inclination, he gets as far 
as a town site on -the Chaldean border — some say no more than 
twenty miles — there the weary old man halted, and exercis- 
ing his authority as head of the household, proclaimed a stay. 
We call Terah an old man; he was now one hundred and forty- 
five ; a child to the Macrobians. Shem was still living. Noah 
had recently died, having passed nine and a half centuries in 
sojourn below. But the lives of men had shortened rapidly. 
Shem saw three and a half centuries less than his father; the 
next three generations decreased the life-term by two centuries 
more ; in Peleg it shortened once more by one-half, so that 
Well might Jacob, the descendant of these veterans, say, amid the 


08 


ABRAHAM. 


short-lived Egyptians, who marvelled at his one hundred and 
thirty years — “Few and evil have the days of my life been, and 
have not attained unto the years of the life of my fathers in the 
days of their pilgrimage” 

Terah, when he gave up the idea of reaching Canaan, withdrew 
himself finally from the pilgrim Church ordained by God ; when 
he paused he built a walled city, and full of paternal love and 
sorrow, called it from his dead son, Haran. It was no ephemeral 
habitation, blotted out by a few years. Ten centuries after this 
Haran was a city, capable of a defence, and worthy to be cap- 
tured, and noted as a victor’s trophy. After this settlement 
Scripture has no further interest in Terah than to record his age 
and death. The birtli-right had been passed forward to his 
nobler son. The eleventh chapter of Genesis, in its last verse, 
reaches onward in the narrative, to note Terah’s decease; thus the 
history of Abraham maybe uninterruptedly pursued. As Noah 
passed through the corrupted race, and through the flood, uncon- 
taminated and unharmed, so Abraham passed through the tempta- 
tions of Chaldean heathenism, and through the semi-idolatry to 
which his father’s house declined, all untouched, the pure Jeho- 
vah worshipper.' 

When his parent paused in Haran, Abraham, with a son’s duty, 
obeyed him, and stayed his step. But here to him came a voice 
from heaven, constituting him the head of the family, and bidding 
him be on his way. 

Abraham; the “ High Father ” of a race, thou art also Abraham 
the passenger* God’s exile, homeward bound, be on thy journey. 
Terah recognized the divine call. He was relieved that the bur- 
den of the spiritual birthright fell from his unwilling shoulders 
upon his hero son, who rejoiced in it ; strong to wander and to 


Tayler Lewis. 


ABRAHAM. 


69 


endure; whose loves and hopes were all garnered in the future; 
who was ready to go up and down viewing the inheritance that 
should fall to his seed, and be consecrated by the footsteps of his 
heavenly son and Saviour. 

We see that Terah assented to his son’s departure, and yielded 
to the rights now vested in him ; for, unless this had been, he 
would not have passed Lot, Haran’s son, over to his departing 
uncle; rather, he would have bade him stay, to close his own 
dying eyes, and inherit the city called from his father’s name. 

But no, the line of Eber is a pilgrim line, and it must wander 
on, and Lot must go to catch his portion of the descending bene- 
diction. 

“ He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy 
of me,” saith Christ. 

Abraham, the Hebrew, loved not his own life, nor stayed to 
bury his father ; but, recognizing the superior claims of his God, 
he set out sixty years before Terah’s death. In the strife between 
filial love and the call of faith, Abraham was true to the higher 
duty. Terah had failed, torn between desire, home-loving, and 
God-serving ; his son was of a stronger heart. 

When we behold Abraham thus going on his way, we must 

remember all that he was leaving. The family affection of these 

♦ 

Hebrews was strong ; he left all his kindred. The sons of Shem 
were distinguished by their Jehovah worship from Jhe children 
of Ham and Japheth. He went forth never to return, going 
among aliens and enemies, weak-handed entering the realm of 
the heathen, a stranger in strange lands, bearing in his bosom the 
long, long pain of his childless estate. 

The earth was at this time no uninhabited desert. When 
we consider the longevity and the vitality of the period, we 
can estimate, in the third century after the flood, a population 
of 45,000,000 of souls. Disperse these over the world, and in 


70 


ABRAHAM. 


another century, which marks the time of Abraham, we must 
expect to find vast territories overspread with a numerous and 
civilized people. Nimrod had established his kingdom in Nineveh 
and Babylon ; Shechem, Luz, and Kirjath-Arba were built ; the 
empire of the Pharaohs towered in Egypt. Resen, “ the great 
city,” lifted its walls between Nineveh and Calah ; Damascus was 
already strong, and thence came Abraham’s steward Eliezer. 
The Syrian plain was divided among kings and nations, walled 
towns, and clustered villages. Amid these rulers and peoples, 
who claimed the earth as their abiding place, who bui lded them- 
selves up in the midst of it, wandered Abraham the nomad ; and 
let us not despise his life. The nomadic state is the basis upon 
which the highest human culture may rest. In its quietude and 
retirement, lofty, religious minds may grow into the princes of 
humanity ; while lower spirits find but opportunity for becoming 
more gross and savage year by year. In Abraham the post-dilu- 
vian dispensation reaches its highest development. As to its 
essence, the faith of Abraham is distinguished from that of his 
pious ancestry, in that he has and holds the promise not only for 
himself, but for his family, and he has the beginnings of the truth 
that in him shall all the families of the earth be blessed. The 
Sethic race had grown corrupt, and lost itself in the line of Cain ; 
Noah alone remaining. Now the line of Shem shows no well 
defined opppsition to all prevailing heathenism ; the taint diffuses 
through the chosen race, and Abraham only is pure of infection. 
But in all this time, in the households of the apostates, God kept 
to himself witnesses and servants, as later we shall find in Mel- 
chizedek. 

Abel introduced the sacrifice of faith ; Enoch the assurance of 
resurrection ; Noah carried faith on triumphant to God’s salva- 
tion in the midst of judgments; and Abraham vindicated his faith 
in renouncing this world, and living by the hope of the everlast- 
ing inheritance. 


ABRAHAM. 


71 


The call came to him in Haran : “ Get thee out from thy country, 
from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house.” Next, the 
promise of guidance, “to a land that I will shew thee.” Then, as 
the faith of Abraham was without fanaticism, generous and loving 
to all — “Thou shalt be a blessing: in thee shall all the families 
of the earth be blessed.” Here was the promise of the Shiloh, the 
coming One, the Christ, the birthright blessing upon Terah’s son. 
This is enough for him ; Jehovah and the Celestial City fill all 
this man’s horizon ; so he departs with his wife “and all that he 
had,” for he means to return no more. “And they went forth to 
go to the land of Canaan.” That was just what Terah had done. — 
“And to the land of Canaan they came.” — Ah, this was more than 
Terah, who lingered and remained at the beginning of the journey. 

The place where first he tarried was Sichem. It was only to 
rest awhile, he had here no continuing city. There his God and 
Friend appeared to him, and pointing through the plain of Moreh, 
along the swelling Jordan, to the slopes of Lebanon, cedar-clad, 
and all the beauty of the land of olive, vine, and palm, declared : 
“To thy seed will I give it.” 

Abraham w r as a great altar builder. So was Isaac, his son. 
Where Abraham tarried he built an altar of unhewn stone, to 
remain token and incentive to the worship of the Lord. He was 
a well digger ; all through the fruitful valleys he left wells for 
refreshing of man and beast, and so passed on his bountiful way, 
as the Church should pursue her course, raising the altars of her 
God, and pouring forth streams of blessing on every hand. 

Anon Abraham is at Bethel, “ House of God,” and here his 
altar is set up, and still the wanderer moves southward. 

All is not sunshine and plenty before him. The heavens with- 
hold their dew; no showers fall in the valleys; the corn ceases to 
wave in the lowlands, and there is no purple cluster jewelling the 
swells of the upland. God’s wayfarer does not find the place of 


72 


ABRAHAM. 


his exile over-fair ; it has its sore pressing wants ; however, there 
is no lack up yonder, where life’s transplanted Tree, watered by a 
river flowing from the eternal throne, fails not to yield fruit every 
month. Before the wanderer lies Egypt, Nile-enriched, while the 
land of his future inheritance is sere and impoverished ; places are 
all one to this man, so his God goes with him, and he enters the 
kingdom of Rameses. The dynasty and residence of this king are 
not now fully determined ; perchance the ancient of the nations, 
gray Egypt, holds among her hieroglyphics this and kindred 
knowledge, which shall yet be given to the hand of science. The 
patriarch may have reached Pelusium, “the strength of Egypt;” 
or “populous No, among the waters;” Zoan in the field, or 
Moph, the mighty. Quite as much darkness seems to envelop 
the proceedings of Abraham in this country. Among the dusky 
children of Canaan and Egypt, the fair Sarah, daughter of Shem, 
shone like a star ; the fame of her beauty was carried to the palace 
of the king. Rameses sought her for his wife. And here some 
opine that Abraham acted from cowardice ; others, “ from a simple 
exaggeration of faith. ” Calvin says that “Abraham had a good 
end in view, but failed in the choice of means.” Whichever way 
it was, whether he acted from too bold or too feeble a faith, God 
did not fail to take care of his servant, make his power known, 
and lead him forth of Mizraim with all glory and safety. 

By the time Abraham returned to Bethel, he was “ very rich ” 
in all that comprised wealth in his age and clime. He had not 
sought the riches of earth ; God had heaped them upon him ; he 
found “godliness profitable for all things.” Perhaps this abun- 
dance was a trial of the man’s faith, to see if he would build a city 
or a house for the preservation of his goods ; whether his soul 
Avould be beguiled by this accumulation of finite treasure. Not 
so; he remains in tents, a pilgrim still; and his abundance 
abounds to his liberality, for he says to Lot his nephew, “Let 


ABRAHAM. 73 

there be no strife between thee and me. Is not the whole land 
before thee?” The father of the faithful puts himself on an 
equality with his nephew; he calls him up to some mountain 
spur, or broad plateau, and shows him all the future territory of 
the beloved nation. Behold the lower plain of Jordan, fair as that 
vanished “ garden of the Lord ; ” see the cities set in it like gems ; 
mark the Jordan, a stream of gold in the setting sunshine; west- 
ward and southward sweep great seas of bloom ; flocks and herds 
stray knee-deep in luscious herbage ; all is Abraham’s ; yet he 
forgets the beauties of the earth in the beauty of the upper land, 
and he bids Lot take whatsoever he may choose. Lot craved the 
glorious plain, thoughtless that it drew him far from Abraham, 
the head of the house of faith; and Abraham dwelt amid his oak 
trees well content. 

The character of Abraham is one of the most magnificent in 
Scripture. We see him rich in faith ; brave in obedience ; grand 
in a holy contempt of the transitory wealth of earth ; noble in his 
generosity to Lot ; humble in the quietness of his life in the oak 
groves of Mamre. We next find him wise in diplomacy ; dwelling 
in the plains of the Amorites, he becomes confederate with three 
princely brothers abiding there ; and next we have him bold and 
skilful in war ; the righteous defender of the weak. 

Lot, wooed by the wealth and pleasure of Sodom, had cast in 
his fate with its ungodly citizens. He had left his native land to 
follow Abraham for the service of God ; we learn from the apostle 
that he retained his integrity, and was still “ just Lot, vexed with 
the filthy conversation of the wicked.” Yet being found among 
these arrant sinners, he suffered with them ; in common with them 
he received the judgments of the Lord, and thus his worldliness 
was chastised. When a servant of God finds himself followed by 
losses and trials, and sees iniquity spreading in his household, let 
him pause and consider whether he is not God’s servant dwelling 


74 


ABRAHAM. 


in the wrong place, for worldly pride, or greed, or pleasure- 
seeking. 

When news came to Abraham that the four strong kings of Asia 
had conquered the feebler rulers of Sodom and the Jordan plain, 
Lot being of the captives, swept away with his family and his 
property in the train of the victorious Chedorlaomer, all the ardent 
family affection of the sons of Eber awoke in Abraham ; the ex- 
pression is significant, “ when he heard that his 1 brother ’ was taken 
captive.” The news was brought “by one that had escaped,” there- 
fore a member of Lot’s family ; for the ordinary fugitive of Sodpm 
would have appealed to a Canaanite. 

We may judge of Abraham’s patriarchal state when we find 
that on a moment’s warning he could arm three hundred and 
eighteen trained servants. Servants trained to instant obedience ; 
trained to family affection, to the service of God, and the practice 
of war. At the head of these men went Abraham ; and we may 
imagine the heroic Sarah, her maidens, and the children of her 
retainers, standing under the shadowing oaks, watching this band 
depart, and with hearts of prayer casting their eyes upon the altar 
of God. Abraham is a skilled general ; at Dan (in Gilead) he 
divides his force ; he pursues in # the night time. This night the 
victory-vain Assyrians spend in feasting and mirth, and Lot in 
humiliation. As the stars grow pale in the amethystine flush of 
dawn, Abraham sweeps down on the host of the four kings from 
the left hand of Damascus, and smites them with his arm of strength. 
They are driven away like chaff on the summer threshing-floors. 
They leave behind in their headlong flight the captives and the 
spoil, and Abraham begins his triumphant return. The monarch 
of Sodom comes out to hail the conqueror of kings. 

But a greater than this heathen prince greets the victor, even 
one who has stood before the world a holy mystery, Melchizedek, 
king of Salem, but moreover priest of the Most High God. With- 


ABRAHAM. 


75 


out genealogy in his priesthood or his kingdom, he is set forth as 
the clearest early type of Messiah, He who came a priest and king, 
in each of these without father, without mother, without beginning 
of descent or end of days. Christ and Melcliizedek had each pro- 
genitors in their humanity, but in their priesthood and kingdom 
they were alone. Eminent in office and in piety, this man was yet 
a Canaanite ; Apostle of the primeval monotheism ; greater than 
Abraham, in that he was the last shining representative of the 
period" of the primitive religion looking back to the lost paradise ; 
he stood with his face lit with the splendors of that evening sky 
which shoots its level rays across the centuries. Pupil of Noah 
and Shem, following in the holy way of Enoch, he shone a glorious 
planet in the night of Canaan’s heathenism. Type of Jesus, he 
met the Church in Abraham its exponent, bearing those holy 
symbols which Christ divided as his memorials on the night be- 
fore he died. Not without a purpose, did God send forth this wor- 
shipper and priest of the pattern found before the flood, to give to 
Abraham and his servants the symbols of the Jehovistic covenant, 
and the world’s last dispensation. He gave them with his blessing; 
and the Patriarch confessed the glory of the age to come after the 
advent of his eternal Son, by paying tithes to Melchizedek his 
type. 

They reached the plain of Sodom, and Abraham, who had not 
fought for spoil, delivered to the lately vanquished people of the 
plain all the booty, suggesting only that his confederates should be 
given their lawful portion. 

We have in Abraham the earliest hero warrior and his tactics. 
From these Cromwell learned the fundamental principles of war- 
fare; from him patterned Napoleon, Gneisenau and Blucher, and 
a host of other heroes. But they have fallen short of their master, 
who lifted up the sword for truth and justice, and scorned the 
greed of plunder and demoniac lust. If nations to-day followed 


7G 


ABRAHAM. 


the example of the brave, skilful, diplomatic and peace-loving 
Abraham, we should not see people of kindred faith and tongue 
drawing the sword, each against his brother ! 

Abraham bore in his heart a heavy grief : “ I go childless, 
and my heir is Eliezer of Damascus.” God came to him : 
“ Fear not ; I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward ! ” 
Verily, oh church and child of God, great is the Holy One of 
Israel in the midst of thee, therefore fear not. Then God led his 
servant out under the star-set canopy of heaven. Those wheeling 
orbs, objects of the Chaldeans’ worship, were but types of Abra- 
ham’s illustrious and numberless seed. Note what follows : 
“ He believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.” 

From God Abraham received a glorious revelation, but it came 
to him through “ a horror of great darkness.” 

Symbol again of what must happen in every age of the Church 
militant. 

Out of darkness — light. 

“ The night is mother of the day, 

The winter of the spring, 

And ever upon old decay 
The greenest mosses cling.’ * 

Out of persecution comes the strength of the Church ; out of 
trial endurance ; out of the martyr flame the martyr crown ; out 
of great tribulation the white-robed throng on high ; from the 
crucifixion day the jubilant Paschal morning ; out of the tomb in 
the garden the living Christ ! 

“ But who shall so forecast the years, 

| Or find in loss a gain to match ? 

{ Or reach a hand through time to catch 

The far-off interest of tears 1 ’ 

In the horror of great darkness Abraham learned the dark 
age of his descendants ; their weary bondage ; then through the 


ABRAHAM. 


77 


black smoke passed a burning lamp, and Abraham was assured 
of the final triumph of his race, coming out of prison to reign, 
and the vast extent of their inheritance. 

During this night in Syria, under the beam of u heaven’s high 
twins,” and amid the rustle of the oak leaves, was foreshadowed 
all time to come ; here the fundamental thoughts of Holy Writ, 
righteousness and faith, were set forth ; here Abraham stands in the 
inward life of justice before God ; here that mighty plant, brought 
from heaven and rooted in the earth, salvation by faith, shot forth 
its flower, bloomed in its matchless beauty before the patriarch. 
Then came a personal promise : “ Thou shalt go to thy fathers in 
peace, and be buried in a good old age.” Thus, “ He who will 
not suffer any to be tempted above that they are able,” strengthened 
his servant in the hour of his need. 

When Abraham had been twenty-five years a pilgrim from 
his father’s house, and still the fulfilment of the promise of an 
heir was delayed, God again appeared to him and renewed the 
covenant. At this time God revealed himself by a new name, 
The Almighty God (El Shaddai), and in sign of the closest inward 
union between himself, Abraham and Sarah, changed the names of 
these great parents of the people Israel. Circumcision was given 
as a sign, distinguishing the chosen race from all others. Abra- 
ham, saint of faith as he was, had endeavored to anticipate the 
movements of God, and in his eager desire for offspring had run 
before the face of his leader. Now through thirteen years since 
the birth of Ishmael, God kept him waiting, that he might 
clearly apprehend that Isaac was a promised, a miraculous seed, 
showing forth the wonder of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. In 
the joy of the renewal of the promise, and the surety of his faith, 
Abraham fell on*’ his face and laughed. His is the first laughter 
mentioned ; Hagar’s weeping in the wilderness is the first record 
of tears. 


78 


ABRAHAM. 


After this, Abraham is set before us in two new phases of his 
character and work, still typifying the Church and her mission. 
In his tent at Mamre he entertains the Lord of Hosts. He comes 
to him as a traveller. 

“ Oh, hope of Israel ! The Saviour thereof in time of trouble, 
why wilt thou be as a stranger in the land, and a wayfaring man 
who tarrieth but for a night ! ” 

God comes into the tabernacle of Abraham, and communes with 
him. He enters to no ceiled house in the grand cities spread 
abroad in Chaldea, or the Jordan plain; but goes to him, the 
stranger upon earth, who journeys, guided by his hand, and 
“ nightly plants his moving tent a day’s march nearer home.” 

This is the “ Lord who dwelleth in Jerusalem forever.” 

The Lord dwelleth in Mount Zion. The Holy Spirit dwelleth 
in the lowly and contrite heart ; maketh his home among men, 
and the King of the Church is in the midst of her. 

Abraham, model of hospitality, seeing first only three tired 
fellow-men, with haste addresses himself to the supply of their 
wants. But he recognizes in one, a Being loftier than the sons of 
earth, the object and centre of his life-long adoration, the Guar- 
dian and Guide of his pilgrim way. He serves with humble zeal 
his guests ; he only can wash the feet of these travellers from the 
skies clad in humanity; no servant’s hands must knead the 
cakes; Sarah, the princess, addresses herself to the honorable 
task; Abraham selects the food, and serves it 'with his own 
hands. So Zaccheus, ages after, entertained the Lord Christ. 
The meal over, two of the guests passed on before, and God, who 
would not hide from Abraham the thing which he did, stood face 
to face with his servant, and through the fleshly garment beamed 
the ineffable glory as on the Mount of Transfiguration. 

“ The cry of Sodcm is great,” said the Lord. Here was about 
to be a prelude of the last day — the evening of the world had 


ABRAHAM. 


79 


come for the cities of the plain. Wrath had gone out against 
them ; with the rising morn should fall a shower of fire, as if all 
the glowing planets rained themselves upon them. 

Abraham here assumed another office of the earthly Church, 
that of an intercessor with God for sinners. Let the ungodly scoff 
at the righteous, know they how often their prayers have stayed 
the eternal hand made bare for war ? Remove God’s Church from 
the world, set the households of the saints suddenly into the land 
whither they are travelling, and how long would the world remain ? 

Abraham reaches the true ideal of intercession. He does not 
pray against God’s justice, but in behalf of it. “ That be far 
from thee, to destroy the righteous with the wicked ! Shall not 
the Judge of all the earth do right?” Abraham intercedes with 
all the strength of faith. He asked, believing. If the condi- 
tions which he made had been met, Sodom would have been 
saved. In his prayer we trace not only the humane heart depre- 
cating the sufferings of fellow-creatures, but the tenderness expe- 
rienced by benefactors for those they have favored. He had 
saved Sodom once by his sword, now he endeavors to save by the 
voice of petition. Abraham ceased asking before the Lord ceased 
granting, but this does not indicate that he ceased asking too soon. 
He set a limit for himself, and was guided in that by his con- 
sciousness of right. He regarded first of all the glory of God ; 
the glory of mercy ; and when mercy is defied, the glory of ven- 
geance. In his self-limitation he remains an example to ‘ the 
Church, as to the true position of the Christian in reference to 
the corruption of the world. There was no fanaticism, no 
phrenzy : he excuses his boldness ; he makes prudent progress in 
his requests, and when the Lord says, “I will not destroy it for 
ten’s sake,” Abraham considers the vastness of Sodom, its splendor, 
its thronging population — what! not ten in all these? Morally 
conditioned, he bows his head, and asks no more. 


80 


ABRAHAM. 


The storm was gathering over Sodom, but the voice of Abra- 
ham’s prayer withheld it till the night closed in — the last night 
of the guilty city ripe for destruction. 

Doubtless for Abraham this was a most solemn night; he 
remembered Lot and his family, and wondered if cleaving to 
heathenism they should be lost, or if serving yet the Lord, as his 
children, they should find a place of safety. He knew the secret 
shared by no other human heart, that the next night-fall would 
see the fertile plain a scarred desert ; the proud cities ruinous 
heaps ; the jostling crowds mere ashes whirled upon the winds. 
Early in the morning he hastened to the spot where he had 
talked witli God. Nowhere else dared he meet confirmation of 
his horrible fears ; there he would be strong. He looked toward 
Sodom and Gomorrah, “ and lo, the smoke of the country went 
up as the smoke of a furn&ce.” 

Mythology bears trace of this significant visit of the Lord to 
the father of the faithful. In the myth, Jupiter, Mercury and 
Neptune visit an old man named Hyricus : he prepares them a 
feast, and they bless his childless age with the glad possession of a 
son. Again, we ha ve the king of gods and men, with Mercury, his 
messenger, entering at night-fall the hut of Philemon and Baucis. 
This pair extend to them their best welcome; they place the 
choicest of their humble fare before those disguised ones, who 
feast on nectar upon Mount Ida ; then the departing gods carry 
off the kindly couple, and a black flood rises up, and covers the 
inhospitable dwellings near, and all the dreary moor. 

In strong contrast to the lofty character of Abraham, the pil- 
grim saint, we find Lot, the weak, the covetous, the erring ; who 
seeks for himself a portion on earth; who does not command his 
household in the fear of the Lord ; who leaves the society of the 
father of the faithful for the orgies of the Sodomites ; who yet re- 
tains some spark of the divine life; who is saved as by fire; pulled 


ABRAHAM. 


81 


out of the jaws of destruction ; who disappears at last, stripped of 
wealth and honor ; dwelling in caves like a wild beast ; parent not 
of a race of righteous men, but of two bastard lines, who wander 
farther and farther from the Light of life. He built his house, but 
he counted not the cost. 

Unless the Lord build the house men labor in vain. Hoary 
with a century of wayfaring ; sick sometimes with hope deferred ; 
looking forward to the inheritance still, the patriarch entered a 
land of laughter ; there was a son born to his old age, the son of 
Sarah. Laughter then in the tent of the nomad ; laughter rippling 
forth to be shared by all who heard ; by the confederate Amorites, 
and the court of the friendly Abimelech in Gerar. 

With this Abimelech, a worshipper of God, and king of those 
Philistines, who soon after lapsed into idolatry, we find Abraham 
making a covenant at Beersheba. They seal the covenant with 
an oath, and Abraham builds an altar to his God, and sets it in a 
grove of tamarisk trees. So should every civil compact have the 
recognition and presence of Almighty God, that it may be honor- 
able and enduring. 

Beersheba was the name given the place of this treaty of peace. 
There was reared the altar of the Lord before whom they stood ; 
there waved the evergreen tamarisk trees, emblems of the eternity 
of God. Here was Abraham, to Abimelech, the preacher ; he stood 
forth to teach the heathen and the partially enlightened, as, on the 
place where he talked with God, he became their intercessor. 
Three great works are recorded^ of Abraham. He labored, he 
preached, he patiently endured his life-long exile. Truly, if he 
had been mindful of the land whence he came out, he might have 
had opportunity to have returned thither ; the way was open ; there 
would have been a warm welcome in the ancestral home. But, 
no ; he who puts his hand to the plough, then looks back, is not 
fit for the kingdom of God ; his eyes must still be on the heavenly 
6 


82 


ABRAHAM. 


habitation ; his desire must take hold of a better country, and be- 
cause of this, God is not ashamed to be called his God. 

Tried long by exile ; by toil ; by poverty ; by riches ; by rumors 
of war ; by the seductions of heathenism ; tried and found steadfast 
still, Abraham had yet to endure another and more searching 
test of his faith. 

At this point in this most tender and beautiful story, we too often 
miss the richest meaning, by considering Isaac as a child. Isaac 
laid upon the altar was a type of Christ; this he would not have 
been as an unconscious or helpless child-victim; but, instead, he 
was in all the vigor of his young manhood ; probably twenty-five 
years old, strong- and hopeful; life bright before him; power in 
his sinews to burst the bands and resist the intention of that gray 
old father. But, instead of this, while Abraham is like God the 
leather, “who so loved that he gave his only -Son,” who “ did not 
spare his own Son but delivered him up,” Isaac is like the Saviour, 
who “ laid down his life of himself,” who “ loved not his own 
life unto death.” 

To Abraham came the command : “ Take now thine only be- 
gotten son and offer him up.” 

Having obeyed the Lord during all his long life, the good 
man does not now hesitate. Fully realizing what it will be to 
have this joy of his eyes and staff of his age removed from him, 
he yet also realizes what it would be to have the light of God’s 
countenance withdrawn ; to lose the fatherly approbation ; to have 
the clouds come between his soul and the heavenly city ; to miss 
the serene fellowship of the immortals. 

Isaac is doubtless accustomed to go with his father to offer 
sacrifice, on one or another of the many altars which marked the 
place of his wanderings. Wood is prepared, the young men- 
servants put it upon the ass, and go their way as directed ; Abra- 
ham and Isaac bid farewell to that loving old mother in the tent 


ABRAHAM. 


83 


door, Sarah, the blonde beauty, still fair and defiant of the ravages 
of time; all her youth has been renewed by this beloved son of 
the promise. She watches him depart, rejoices in his manly form 
and active step ; one day he shall bring a wife of the holy He- 
brew family to her tent, and she shall have his children in her 
arms. Sarah turns to set tasks for her maidens with her face 
bright with hope ; she knows not that her husband goes to Moriah, 
the mountain of the Lord, to slay her son ! 

Meantime, the first thought of Abraham will be of the hour 
when he shall return alone, to break the heart of that wife and 
mother. The knife in his girdle will stab her heart when it enters 
the bosom of her son. 

Then he thinks of Isaac ; they have worshipped together well 
pleased before; what will he do now, when he himself must be- 
come the bleeding type of redemption? But Abraham knows 
the unquestioning obedience, the holy zeal, the intense devotion of 
his child ; that son’s will has ever run parallel with his father’s, 
and the twin current has flowed in the line with the divine inten- 
tion. There will be no hesitancy there. Then in his secret thought 
he acts and reenacts the soul-thrilling scene ; the strength of his 
aged hand must come from Heaven, or it will not suffice to strike 
so fatal a blow. What ! to see that active frame grow limp, and 
then freeze to death’s marble ; to see the blood that now reddens 
in the cheek dripping, dripping over that unhewn altar, and dew- 
ing the appalled earth ; no more to hear that voice in sweet tones 
saying, my father ! See how the young man rejoices in his own 
exuberant vitality ; how he looks up to the clear skies ; follows 
the flight of birds ; marks the beauty of groves of oak, tamarisk 
and palm ; turns well pleased to vine and blossom ; and fixes 
often his gaze on the mountains towering against the sky. 

He thought of their white raiment, the ghostly capes that screen them. 

Of the storm winds that beat them, their thunder rents and scars, 

And the paradise of purple, and the golden slopes atween them, 

And fields w'here grow God’s gentian bells, and His crocus stars.” 


84 


ABRAHAM. 


These glances must grow dark in death ! Then faith spoke : 
“ In Isaac shall thy seed be called, that seed like the sand grains 
numberless.” Isaac must live ; children and children’s children 
could not grow out of his grave ; therefore Abraham remembering 
how Isaac had in a manner sprung from death, being born when 
human hope of progeny was dead, comforted himself in the hope 
that God must and would reanimate the body of his slain son. 
Faith believes in the physically impossible. In all the history 
of earth there had been then none raised from the dead; but 
Abraham looked past the fact to the power of God ; as, says the 
apostle, “ accounting that God was able to raise him up, even 
from the dead ; from whence also he had received him in a figure.” 

This was a consoling faith, but it could not do away with the 
sad thought of the precedent death. Abraham knew what death 
was ; he had seen it in Haran his brother ; he had seen the 
lamb laid on the stone, and marked the pitiful imploring of its 
look. 

“ But oh, ’tis dowier far to see 
The wa’ gang o’ ane the heart gangs wi’, 

The dead set o’ the shining e’e, 

That closes the weary warld on tliee ! ” 

Musing thus ; strengthening his heart betimes by calling on his 
God, Abraham reached the last stage of his journey. They were 
beyond the folds and the flocks, and Isaac began to wonder whence 
the offering would come. 

On the third day Abraham beheld the ordained spot, Moriah, 
Mount of Vision, where in days to come the marble and golden 
splendors of the temple should delight the land. The patriarch 
spoke calmly to his servants, though his heart was dying within 
him: “ Abide ye herewith the ass: and I and the lad will go 
yonder and worship, and come again to you ! ” 

The wood is laid upon Isaac, and with his parent he begins the 
ascent toward the thicket-crowned summit of the mountain. Then 
he asks : 


ABRAHAM. 


85 


“ My father ! behold the fire and the wood, but where is the 
lamb for the burnt-offering ? ” 

It is a terrible question for a father in Abraham’s position, but 
he replies, with holy confidence : “ My son, God will provide him- 
self a lamb.” 

Together they reach the appointed place, they build the altar, 
lay the wood in readiness, and the trembling father, natural an- 
guish contending with obedient faith, unfolds to his son the vision 
i from the Lord. From that godly heir his faltering spirit receives 
encouragement. Isaac at once cheerfully agrees to die. He has 
been trained to seek first the celestial inheritance, and while earth 
is dear and beautiful, the city on high is fairer still. A last tender 
embrace — his love with his child is laid on that lone altar ; then, 
crowning act of faith and submission, the patriarch took his knife 
to slay his son ! Again comes the divine voice, never more wel- 
come than now : u Lay not thine hand upon the lad ; now I know 
that thou fearest me ; thou hast not withheld thine only son.” Glad 
as the trumpet of the angel proclaiming the first resurrection from 
the dead ! At this respite the old man’s strength is renewed. He 
sees a ram caught in the thicket, and recognizes in it his son’s sub- 
stitute. He runs for the new victim ; he offers it with an over- 
flowing heart. Here on the mountain the father and son make a 
new consecration of themselves ; they have given all to God, even 
life, his first gift to them ; thenceforth they are more than ever 
bought with a price. But richest experience of all is the unfolding 
of the plan of salvation, the mediatorial work, and the doctrine of 
substitution. 

Abraham in old age, Isaac in early manhood, met together the 
crucial test of their living faith. Abraham had been tried and 
tried again, an ascending series of temptations ; but Isaac met all 
his fate at once. This was a sufficient experience for a lifetime ; 
after this complete self-immolation, the life of Isaac rolled through 
more than a century of peace. 


86 


ABRAHAM. 


Standing together on the Mount Moriah in a rapture of grati- 
tude and adoration, these two listened to the words of the angel 
of the Lord, prophesying of the time to come, and the perpetual 
blessing. 

With this account of the scene on Mount Moriah ends the 
spiritual history of Abraham ; his trials and his inward growth. 
The narrative passes on to the building up of his household, and 
nation. This man had come forth from the furnace as gold : the 
Refiner had seen at last his own image clearly mirrored in the 
flame-purified spirit; and had said, “it is enough.” 

Between the journey to Moriah and the death of Sarah, is an 
interval of some years. The first portion of this time Abraham 
spent at Beersheba, and there he heard of the death of Terah, and 
of the prosperity and increase of the family of his brother Nahor, 
in Ur of the Chaldees. Later, the patriarch removed to Kirjath- 
Arba, and there Sarah died, her grave becoming the centre and 
eradle of the Abrahamic kingdom. She is the only woman whose 
age at death is mentioned in the Bible ; and she receives this dis- 
tinction because, as the mother of the seed of promise, she is the 
mother of true believers in all the years to come. Kirjath-Arba 
is Hebron, afterwards called El Chalil. from Abraham “the friend 
of God.” 

A sore affliction is this death, entering into the love-united house- 
hold ; we learn the strength of Isaac’s tenderness and sorrow, in 

that he is not comforted for three years — not until he sees the 
/ 

blooming Rebekah established in his beautiful mother’s deserted 
tent. 

Sarah was gone ; the lifeless body lay in the midst of the weep- 
ing family ; all around the tent spread the beauty of Hebron, 
vineyards, olive trees and orchards. From his flocks came the 
shepherd prince, and sat down at the feet of her whom he had 
loved, to mourn. 


ABRAHAM. 


87 


Then he drew near to the gate of Hebron, and addressed the 
citizens : “ I am a stranger and a sojourner, give me a place where 
I may bury my dead ! ” 

The holy family would not mingle its dead with idolaters — the 
beloved Sarah was yet Abraham’s own, and he would lay her by 
herself in solemn state, his most precious treasure. He desires 
from Ephron, the lord of the city, that cave famous in history as 
the burial place of those names of renown ; the three great patri- 
archs and their wives, ancestors of kings and of Christ; and here 
we notice that Jacob was placed in Machpelah, not beside Rachel 
his best loved, but by Leah, the mother of the royal line of the 
house of Judah. 

The story of this purchase of Machpelah is one of singular 
beauty and simplicity ; each sentence is a well-cut cameo. We 
see Abraham in the dignity of his sorrow, courtly, prudent and 
decided ; Ephron, elegant and stately, with all the flowers of 
eastern courtesy in his speech ; the children of Heth standing by, 
protesting : “ Hear us, my lord, thou art a mighty prince among 
us ; in the choice of our sepulchres bury thy dead.” Then the 
price is fixed, the money weighed, the boundaries and possession 
are made sure. 

Smith assumes that four hundred shekels, or two hundred and 
fifty dollars of our money, a large sum for that time, was an ex- 
orbitant price for the spot, and marks Ephron as avaricious and 
over-reaching; but to this it is properly replied, that while the 
Rabbins describe Ephron as greedy, we cannot decide with them, 
while the limits of this purchase, and the ordinary price of land 
at that time, are unknown to us. 

After this burial comes a bridal. Abraham, anxious to preserve 
the purity of his house, sent Eliezer to Mesopotamia, to the city 
of Nahor, to bring thence a wife for Isaac. From this union 
shone the beautiful family life of devotion and affection which 


88 


ABRAHAM. 


the Jews commemorated in their nuptial benediction. The speech 
of Eliezer, the first recorded, is worthy of its place ; it flows sweet 
as a poem, every sentence some golden truth ; it sets forth the man 
loyal to God and to his master, having duty ever before his eyes, 
honest, gracious, dignified. Would that every government had an 
ambassador of kindred spirit ! This love story of Isaac and Re- 
bekah, is the true model for all time. It begins in God fearing 
and serving ; it is sanctified by prayer ; it is a blessed theocratic 
marriage, the true foundation of a happy, holy household. 

There were fair maidens in Canaan ; there were such men as 
Melchizedek and Abimelech among the children of Ham; but 
their light was waning ; the curse of Sodom was amid them, their 
end was decreed ; from the godly line of Shem must come the 
wife Isaac could revere as well as love. He looked first for grace 
of heart, and God who giveth liberally, sent him also the match- 
less personal beauty of Rebekah. Nor was this charm without its 
effect on Isaac’s messenger ; the good old man was anxious to 
crown his mission with such a radiant loveliness as he remembered 
in his mistress Sarah; and when the glorious perfections of 
Rebekah shone on him at the well, he made haste to choose her 
from the maidens, and apply the test on which he had prayerfully 
decided. 

This marriage of Isaac removed Abraham’s last care on earth. 
He lived to see his twin grandsons, Jacob and Esau, reach their 
boyhood; then his pilgrim days were ended. “He died in a 
good old age, an old man and full of years.” He had spent his 
£ears day by day in God’s service ; now they seemed as days for 
shortness; and he was “gathered to his people,” not in that he 
merely died, or was laid in his family burial-place; but he had 
his citizenship in heaven, he was a fellow-citizen with the saints; 
all those from Abel were his kinsmen in flesh and faith ; and now 
at last he joined them. It was emphatically a getting home : he 


ABRAHAM. 


89 


who had no abiding city here, dwelt at last among sure founda- 
tions, and entered a home eternal. The wanderer found a place 
whence he should go no more out. He had reached the true 
Mount Zion, and had come to the “ City of the Living God, the 
heavenly Jerusalem, the innumerable company of angels, the 
general assembly and church of the first-born, whose names are 
written in heaven ; and to God the Judge of all, and to the 
spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the 
New Covenant to all this had he come; so shall all those come, 
earth’s pilgrims and sojourners, who with singleness of heart, and 
unconquered faith, climb like Abraham the steep and starry road 
to the dwelling of the Infinite. 

Fellow-citizen of the saints was Abraham, father of the faithful 
and friend of God ; such may each one be who sets his affections 
on things above, rather than on things below. This citizenship is 
that to which we are ordained, and we fail of it not by God’s will, 
but by our own error. The inheritance of the saints in light is for 
us ; heirship of God is set before us ; we see in Abraham how faith 
becomes fruition, and yet we are prone to build our nests on some 
great place of earth, and desire to rise no higher. But there is a 
better way. Lay up treasure in heaven, unmindful of the fleet- 
ing things of time. 

“ What though unmarked the happy workman toil, 

And break unthanked of men the stubborn clod, 

It is enough, for sacred is the soil, 

Dear are the hills of God.” 


IV. 


JACOB AND ESAU. 

THE STRIFE OF NATURE AND GRACE. 


HE physical, moral and intellectual variations, which exist 
between offspring of the same parents, have in all ages 
formed a subject of interest and investigation to every 
thinker. ’ The father vainly queries why, while one of 
his sons, in early maturity, soberly and industriously takes his 
place, a man among men ; another is an erratic genius, doomed to 
perpetual unrest, a wanderer over earth, or, at home, is ever a 
parent’s sorrow. 

The mother wonders how it is, that one of her children, reli- 
gious and loving, forms her chief solace ; and another, with singu- 
lar moral discrepancies, furnishes a source of continual perplexity 
and distress. While these are to the parental heart questions of 
vital importance, the philosopher is attracted by them as provoca- 
tive of deep psychological research. 

These diversities in families have been variously explained, as 
the result of ante-natal states or impressions ; of physical changes, 
or advanced or imperfect mental development of the parents ; and 
by altered views and modified systems of the educator. But just 
as a carefully fabricated theory is in a state conducive to cheerful 
assurance, Nature, in some new product, sets the explications of 
reason at defiance. 

In the first family we have seen a murderer and a martyr ; an 
90 



JACOB AND ESAU. 


91 


heir of heaven and a servant of Belial : in the sons of the saintly 
Isaac, we behold an almost equal contrariety exhibited in twin- 
children ; hereafter, we shall be called to view this singular con- 
verse, not only in brothers, and offspring of a single birth, but in 
one and the same soul and body, in the one individual. 

To those who scan the laws of inheritance, Jacob and Esau 
afford studies of deep interest, dividing and combining, as they do, 
the traits of both their parents. The great love of Isaac and Re- 
bekah was doubtless intensified, because each was the complement 
of the other. Rebekah was active in nature, Isaac passive ; the 
wife was ardent, ambitious, far-seeing ; the husband contemplative, 
mild, content. Isaac dealt more in faith, Rebekah in reason ; the 
woman was by far the best strategist, and singularly enough in 
the exhibition of parental tenderness, the father gave ear to natural 
instinct, and would, in behalf of it, have set aside that Divine 
verdict which had been the rule of his life : while the mother, be- 
coming a fatalist, put her will, hope and choice in the line of the 
heavenly prediction, and, in accordance with it, anticipated her chil- 
dren's future. 

While each son had characteristics of both parents, Esau was, 
on the whole, more like hjs mother, Jacob like his father. . The 
elder-born had his mother's bounding vigor ; her ardent tempera- 
ment, her brave frankness ; but from Isaac he received a contented 
dwelling in the present, an unambitious satisfaction, a hopeless 
yielding to the pressure of circumstances, and an innocence of 
craft; Jacob had his father's delicate frame, his domestic, contem- 
plative habit, his devoutness ; from the mother he had lieired the 
ability to think rapidly and prudently, an abundant cunning, and, 
chief trait of all, a valuing of *the future beyond to-day, and an 
ambition that did not centre on the spoils of the passing hour, but 
reached forward to his children and his children's children, for all 
the ages to come. It was a greedy, earthly, human ^ambition at 


92 


JACOB AND ESAU. 


first, but was capable of being purified by sharp fires of affliction, 
letting go its hold on time, clasping itself about the everlasting 
glory, reaching through the aeons of aeons, and realizing the 
transcendant restoration, .the splendors of the New Jerusalem, the 
mystery and majesty of the incarnation, and the final consumma- 
tion and perfection of the economy of God. 

Between these two was the strife of the physical with the spiritual, 
the finite with the infinite ; and from the very beginning of their 
history we see the active reasoning mind of Jacob, intent upon 
the really valuable, while Esau craves chiefly the present good, 
however evanescent. At the first flush, Esau was doubtless the 
man to enlist liking and sympathy, but Jacob would wear better, 
and had within himself the material from which a truly grand 
character might be educed. We must consider these brothers in 
the light cast by the growing years upon them, in their surround- 
ings and possibilities. The young, and the cursory reader of Srip- 
ture, is ever inclined to take the side of Esau in the contest that 
goes on for years ; to consider him by all odds the better fellow, 
very hardly used by brother, mother, and perhaps by his God ! 
But looking closely into the history, we shall find that Esau got 
all that he desired, that he received exactly what he had use for, 
and what was best fitted for him ; and that the distinctions of Jacob 
would have been a mere burden on Esau’s hands. Jacob was 
suited to the position to which he was called, Esau to that in which 
he was left. When we have examined their motives and their 
lives, we shall find that the acute Rebekah read her sons aright 
from the beginning, and we know she judged them by the light 
of prophecy. Now there was in the family of Jacob a spiritual 
birthright, which had come down from Seth ; there was also an 
earthly inheritance of flocks, herds, tents and other nomadic wealth. 

The spiritual birthright had its privileges, and they were these: 
its inheritor was the priest and intercessor of his family ; he com- 


JACOB AND ESAU. 


93 


muned with God ; he was directed in his actions by the clear man- 
date of his Lord and Maker ; and he had the sure hope that from 
him, in the direct line of his posterity, should spring the coming 
One, Jehovah in the flesh. 

The birthright had its conditions. He who received it must be 
a pilgrim and stranger on earth ; he must be obedient to every 
behest, even the most difficult and unexpected, of the divine Voice ; 
he must have his treasure, his love, his dwelling-place, in the Un- 
seen ; and he must keep his race pure, making in the fear of the 
Lord a sacred, single theocratic marriage. Piety, and not the 
lusts of the flesh, must be the aim of his life. This was Isaac’s 
view, drawn from the practice of his ancestors ; alas, soon deviated 
from by his heir ! These possibilities, expectations and restrictions, 
had Isaac made known to his two sons ; and he designed the privi- 
leges and the obligations of the spiritual birthright for Esau, his 
elder born. But Esau had no moral aptitude for these things. 

Esau stood before his father, a model of manly strength. The 
mild, philosophic, devout parent regarded with wondering pride 
the dashing young athelete, the stately hunter, roving fearless of 
those Philistines whom his father had ever dreaded; standing 
among the tents of the patriarch, a youthful lord. The tempera- 
ments of the father and son were antithetical, and in the vigorous 
young prince he had begotten, Isaac took refuge ; here was a de- 
fender, here was he that should drive out the heathen, and bring 
in the kingdom ; he was forgetting the prophesied bondage, the 
travail of his race in Egypt, the long-delayed empire. 

The mother, looking at her eldest son with clearer insight, saw 
the spirit weaker by far than the flesh ; saw that the sacred birth- 
right would be a hated burden ; saw her Esau the servitor of him- 
self; saw that the inheritance this man craved was riches, wives, 
power, feastings and revelries. By some subtle law that no one 
can explain, the blood of father Adam in Esau had developed a 


91 


JACOB AND ESAU. 


new Lamech, ^weapon in hand, bold, jubilant, and claiming many 
wives; the life of Noah distilled in Esau, awoke a second Nimrod, 
a mighty hunter, a law unto himself, a rebel to all law that did 
not acquiesce with his desire ; and still the vital current reaching 
through generations had procreated him another freebooting Ish- 
mael, who would go here and there as suited his wild whim, and 
did not tremble at thought or sight of blood. 

Jacob listening eagerly while his father set before the jolly, 
careless-hearing, undevout Esau, the spiritual birthright and its 
entailed duties, craved it for himself; he communed of it with his 
mother ; he studied with regard to it the history of his ancestors ; 
he gained from his father every possible item of information ; he 
grew to long for it with a passionate yearning that would not be 
denied ; to regard it as the one thing beyond all others worth 
living for ; and without which, life, riches, descendants would not 
be worth the having. Studious like his father, he sat in his tent- 
door, or slowly wandered with his sheep, pondering of the birth- 
right in the purely spiritual sense. It w T as not the greed of 
servants and herds, and goodly garments, that possessed him; 
Esau might have them; but to plead with heaven for his family ; 
to commune with the eternal world while yet dwelling in the 
flesh ; to have a chosen, consecrated house ; to have the world’s 
King and salvation, the Divine-human proceed from himself! Ah, 
here was a glory, grand and far-sweeping enough to match the 
boundless ambition of Rebekah’s dearer son. 

How he envied his brother that possession ; how he wondered 
at the hunter’s lofty indifference to its richer part, and marvelled 
when he saw him regarding it as simply a coming into the heaped 
up temporal wealth of Abraham and Isaac. This spiritual birth- 
right he hungered for with inexpressible desire; his father coolly 
ignored his passion of covetousness for the unseen and future ; but 
his mother ! Ah ! she understood him ; she knew how he longed ; 


JACOB AND ESAU. 


95 


she felt that he would live with eye single to this glorious posses- 
sion • yea, more, she told him that he ought to have it, that Esau 
would not know what to do with it, and that beyond all this, it 
had been promised to him unborn, by the voice of the angel. 
Rebekah also pledged herself to obtain satisfaction for her son ; 
and son and mother alike bent all their energies to wresting from 
Isaac — for the first time in his life grown obstinate and self- 
willed — the blessing which should confirm the birthright. 

Even while experiencing this intensity of craving for a purely 
spiritual gift, Jacob was an unconverted man. But in this stage 
of their soul-life he and his brother exhibited two distinct varie- 
ties. Esau’s every thought, wish, ambition, took hold on earth ; 
he could not realize or appreciate anything higher. If there were 
anything better than the mad excitement of the chase, pursuing 
roe and gazelle, and savage beast across the plain, and through 
the deep defile ; if there were anything more desirable than those 
daughters of the Hittites, the black-eyed Judith, and the beauti- 
ful Bashemath, Esau did not care to know it ; he would not hear 
nor confess the supremacy of the spiritual. 

Jacob, on the other hand, realized a more excellent way, and 
desired it ; prudent as Rebekah, thoughtful as Isaac, he learned 
all that was possible of earth and of heaven ; he sat down and 
weighed the original glory with its mere reflection ; he compared 
time to eternity ; the celestial with the fleshly ; the future with 
the present ; the spirit of grandfather Abraham was in him so 
that he elected the better part, and preferred the kingdom of the 
future, to the possibilities of to-day. Having seen this, and felt 
this, he set himself to obtain what he wanted, and did not take 
pains to seek a suitable method. Careful like Isaac, he had not 
yet been afflicted into being prayerful. His first idea was to buy 
the heavenly birthright; and we have now many men of a 
kindred spirit; their views are broad enough to take hold of the 


96 


JACOB AND ESAU. 


need of salvation, of changed hope, of the life beyond death ; they 
know there is something better than worldliness ; they mean to 
have it if possible. They do not ask God to give it to them, but 
they buy it — if they can — by large charities ; and sometimes they 
make the matter surer by joining the church ; but these uncon- 
verted Jacobs are in better case than their Esau brethren, for they 
are chastized by continual unrest ; and are goaded on until in 
some blessed hour of desolation, loneliness and self-despair, they 
cast themselves upon God, see a ladder between earth and heaven, 
and rise up to build an altar to the Lord. 

Esau is the man of impulse ; the man of nature, uncontrolled 
by religion ; he is not like Cain, a specious moralist, nor is he 
like Canaan an age-despising blackguard ; he is simply the high- 
est type of ‘the physical, combined with the very lowest form of 
the spiritual. He has natural affections, natural hopes, natural 
desires ; for instance, he loves hfs father ; he cajoles the old man, 
he brings him his favorite venison, and entertains him with tales 
of how he pursued the antelope and wild goat on the mountain, 
and made the wandering Philistine quail as he dashed by him on 
the plain. We can imagine him casting some of his spoils at his 
mother’s tent-door; lounging near her to rest; challenging her 
admiration for his goodly garments, and the rich perfumes which 
he has maybe bought, maybe taken as toll from an Egypt-bound 
caravan — for he is a bit of a Sybarite as well as a hunter ; he flatters 
his mother ; makes her presents ; jeers a little at her petting of 
Jacob ; in his free and easy way considers himself a model son ; 
the stay of his house, and fully as affectionate as need be ; but he 
never mentions to these parents his love-making in the tents of 
Beeri, and in the dwelling of Elon ; he never consults them about 
choosing a wife ; he clearly considers the business none of theirs ; 
and some bright day he brings to his tents two wives, and these 
charming idolatresses set up their images and adore their false 


JACOB AND ESAU. 


97 


gods, and are a bitter withering, killing heart sorrow to Isaac and 
Rebekah. 

The depths of the individuality of these two brothers were 
never more clearly shown than in the selling and buying of the 
biithright. Esau, in his hour of weakness, becomes a type of all 
‘ who g ive U P th e greater for the sake of the less ; who exchange 
the higher for the lower, the eternal for the temporal. u Let us 
eat and drink for to-morrow we die,” was Esau’s motto. But 
Jacob knew how to prize the promises. Esau, manly, placable, 
careless, stands in contrast to his crafty, over-reaching, far-seeing 
brother, and the heart instinctively leans to him • but he is evidently 
the reckless child of the hour, utterly unfit to be a patriarch of the 
people of the future. And here just where Jacob shows himself 
in the least pleasant light, we are apt to blame him too severely. 

What Esau asked was not necessary to his existence ; it was 
merely the demand of an appetite never restricted ; the indul- 
gence of which was the first thought of his life ; he exhibited his 
customary gross bondage to sense, and it was impossible for Jacob 
to fail to see this. Moreover, Jacob asked Esau to sell him a 
possession which was a matter of perfect indifference to Esau ; he 
did not ask for the temporal but the spiritual birthright ; not for 
the property, but the priesthood of the family. We see this after- 
wards when Jacob having gotten the blessing, flies staff in hand, 
nor pays the least heed to worldly goods ; nor do we learn that 
he is ever enriched other than by the blessing of God on his own 
industry. Here we see the brothers ; Jacob, domestic and econom- 
ical, preparing his vegetable food, stooping over his fire, stirring 
the red lentil porridge; Esau stands by, holding his bow and 
arrows, and leaning on his spear. The question between them is 
of future importance, the safety of a world : behind the savory 
steam that rises upward, Jacob sees a lengthening vista of years, 
a kingdom of earth and heaven : it is the ruling idea of his life. 


98 


JACOB AND ESAU. 


Esau sees nothing but a favorite pottage : we behold the reli- 
gious inclination of the one ; the spiritual superficiality of the 
other. “ Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage, for I 
am faint,” said Esau. 

Looking up from his occupation, Jacob hastily speaks his ever- 
present desire : u Sell me this day thy birthright.” Esau knows 
which birthright is intended — a something that is little good to 
him ; rather of an infliction in fact, demanding self-sacrifice to 
which he does not wish to attain. He replies carelessly : “ Behold, 
I am at the point to die, and what profit shall this birthright 
do me?” 

He is not at the point of death from starvation, but he is 
speaking in a general manner : he is a hunter, a rover : he is 
daily in danger of death from Philistines, and from wild beasts ; 
the priesthood, the future empire, the Messiah among his descend- 
ants, will do him little good when he is dead : he forgets that 
these saved Noah, their inheritor, when a world was drowned ; 
and preserved Isaac his father, bound on the sacrificial altar. 

Jacob is amazed and delighted at his brother’s acquiescence ; 
he has shown meanness toward Esau, in asking so much of him, 
when he is weary and hungry ; meanness in taking advantage of 
his bondage to appetite; but Jacob does what is still more 
unbrotherly and condemnable, when he says : “ Swear to me this 
day!” 

Esau should have resented the idea of an oath to bind the con- 
tract ; his manliness should have revolted from the imposition ; 
but he is placable and easy, as was Isaac when he suffered the 
Canaanites to drive him from well after well. He replies : “ I 
swear unto thee,” and thus he sold his spiritual inheritance ; the 
one great possession handed down from the days of Seth ! 

Jacob with alacrity serves his hungry brother with bread and 
pottage. By his greater strength Esau could have taken this by 


JACOB AND ESAU* 


99 


force ; but he good-naturedly buys it, at a price which he cannot 
comprehend — as a savage gives an ingot of gold for a string of 
glass bea^s, and a diamond for a clasp knife. 

In his eager demand for his brother to confirm the sale of the 
birthright by an oath, Jacob shows an inborn trait, suspicion, 
which was the bane of his whole life. He exhibited it to Laban 
when he fled from him secretly ; to Esau again, when, after their 
touching re-union, he refused to accompany him on the march ; 
to his sons, when he would not suffer Benjamin to go with them 
to Egypt ; and when he doubted their report concerning Joseph 
the Prime minister; to his God, when he cried in bitterness of soul : 
“All these things are against me ! ” In fact, this is the penalty 
ever paid by the exceedingly wary and crafty, that they are 
always suspecting their fellows of an attempt to overreach them. 

“ Thus,” says the sacred historian, “ Esau despised his birth- 
right ! ” It gives the fact, and makes no comment. We pause 
a moment to consider what Esau despised. And here we find 
the keynote of his life, utter indifference to matters of faith. 
He is the creature of the senses. 

In this birthright Esau despised the covenant fellowship with 
Jehovah ; the future possession of Canaan, a kingdom under God, 
a fief of heaven; he despised moreover the progen itorship of the 
Messiah, of Him “ in whom all the families of the earth should 
be blessed.” No wonder that for this contempt the Apostle 
calls him a “ profane person ; ” while Jacob is praised for rightly 
appreciating a benefit set so far in the future, and' the invisible. 
While Jacob wanders apart to rejoice over this property in the 
unseen and intangible, Esau feasts on bread and red porridge. 

“ Oh, not by bread alone is manhood nourished, 

To its supreme estate ! 

By every word of God have lived and flourished 
The good men and the great, 

Ay, not by bread alone 1 ” 


100 


JACOB AND ESAU. 


Having obtained by purchase from Esau the birthright, it 
remained for Jacob to win the confirmatory blessing from Isaac. 
This he was not able to do until he reached his seventy-seventh 
year. At this time he was yet unmarried, for Isaac having 
resolved upon giving the birthright to Esau — in spite of his 
heathen marriages — had taken no trouble to procure a wife for 
Jacob; and Jacob, fixed in his resolution to be the heir of the 
spiritual privileges, and knowing what duties belonged thereto, 
would not ally himself to unbelievers of the land of his sojourn. 

The story of the deception which Isaac’s blindness and infirmity 
permitted to be carried out, it is needless to repeat. Weak and 
old, Isaac expected soon to die; though in fact his life was pro- 
longed for forty-three years. The representations of Rebekah, the 
prophecy of the Angel, and the evident unfitness of Esau for the 
position into which his doting father would thrust him, had no 
effect to alter an old man’s obstinate resolve. 

We come now to a profound tragedy of the patriarchal life, 
and see through human vicissitudes, anguish and perplexity, the 
Divine Will holding its calm, majestic way. 

Isaac, knowing the opposition of his wife and younger son to 
his proposed course, intends to bestow the rich blessing in a 
shameful secrecy ; and the easy-going Esau is willing so to accept 
it, for all he knows that it will include what he has already sold 
with an oath. Isaac realizes what divine afflatus he may expect 
at his death hour, making him to choose between his children as 
God chooses ; but he will not wait for that. . 

The old man has on his side human will, wisdom and descent, 
without any spiritual certainty. His wife has the advantage of 
him, holding on her part divine will, and wisdom, and command- 
ment ; Isaac is about to utter, as by heavenly dictation, a mere 
human caprice; his error would have been fatal; in comparison 
with this danger, the course of Rebekah was right ; it was the last 


JACOB AND ESAU. 


101 


desperate effort of a wise Christian woman to preserve the purity 
and safety of her household. 

But as a consequence of these painful family deceptions, the 
dignity and lustre of Isaac’s age are obscured ; brothers part in 
wrath ; the mother is deprived of her best solace ; and the son 
becomes a poor outcast. It is a sad scene in this dwelling of the 
saintly Isaac ; this deceit and separation among the saints of God. 
There are no flawless saints this side of heaven ; their pattern 
and their future are perfect, their earth life bears the taint of the 
earthy. 

The explication of this portion of the history now demands an 
excursus on the apparent contradiction of Esau’s contempt and 
Esau’s tears. Esau despises and sells his birthright to Jacob, and 
anon he breaks out into bitter wailing: “ Bless me, even me also, 
O my father ! ” 

In the matter of selling the birthright, for the absurd price of 
a mess of red pottage, we must consider first, Esau’s ruling charac- 
teristic — a living in the present, and an undervaluing of the future. 
At that moment all Esau wanted was red pottage ; he had tents, 
wives, food, servants, garments, all the riches of the nomad ; red 
pottage alone he craved at that minute, and to supply that need was 
his first desire. He knew that his father had yet probably very many 
years to live, and it would be therefore long before the property 
came to his heirs; and in the changes and chances of his hunter, 
freebooting life, Esau was quite likely to die before Isaac. Next, 
we must remember that while these considerations led him to un- 
dervalue his inheritance in toto, he fully understood Jacob’s pre- 
vailing passion, and when speaking with him knew that the refer- 
ence was mainly to the spiritual birthright; Jacob was willing to 
take that and resign flocks, herds and other patriarchal wealth ; 
Esau so understood it, and absolutely in his secret soul thought 
the spiritual birthright more a burden than a profit, and thus 
despised it. 


102 


JACOB AND ESAU. 


But now when Isaac, grown very feeble, talks of blessing his 
sons, the excitable Esau believes his father has had a premonition 
of speedy death ; he sees himself now more than likely to outlive 
his parent, and his chance of heiring the property becomes a matter 
of importance. Moreover, when Isaac speaks of birthright and 
blessing, Esau sees that it is in a temporal as well as a spiritual 
sense ; the flocks and the tents are going with the priesthood ; the 
servants and the wells of water are to be part and parcel of that 
birthright benediction ; the tangible is to be joined to the invisible. 
Esau cannot let all go ; what if he did in a limited sense sell out 
to Jacob, and swear to the bargain, he will now ignore that trans- 
action, and get the blessing ; he had rather be weighed down with 
religious duties than be shorn of temporal wealth. It is this ap- 
parent nearness of the disposition and division of the property, 
and the fact that finite wealth is to be joined by Isaac with the 
strange kingdom of the future, that fires Esau’s slothful soul, and 
wakes in him desires which when disappointed gush forth in un- 
availing cries and tears. It is this which spurs him into wrathful 
threats to slay Jacob ; for if Jacob is dead there will be no one to 
dispute Esau’s sole heirship ; and it is this which causes Esau’s 
fury to moderate, and thoughts of murder to fade from his mind, 
when Jacob has run away to Mesopotamia, with only a staff in his 
hand. It is this that when Isaac still lingers after twenty years, 
but is evidently near death, and Jacob after so long exile seems v 
suddenly returning to get possession of the property, which caused 
Esau to go to meet him with four hundred men ; and only a meet- 
ing with God, and a change of heart, would have changed Esau’s 
purpose, and have caused him so peaceably after his father’s burial 
to move to Mount Seir, and leave the land to Jacob ; though we 
have no doubt that then at least half that was Isaac’s went with 
his elder son ; but by this time both Esau and Jacob had grown so 
wealthy that the land was not able to yield food for the dependents 


JACOB AND ESAU. 


103 

of both, and each had more property than he well knew what to 
do with. 

But now, to return to the scene in the tent of Isaac, when Re- 
bekah’s wile disappoints her husband’s intention. Jacob had re- 
ceived the parental blessing, and gone out from his father’s tent in 
a tumult of joy, terror, triumph and shame. Then Esau enters in. 
There is no scene more touching in Holy Writ. The disappoint- 
ment and despair of Esau ; the trembling of Isaac at the indignity 
put on him by the deceit, and his consciousness that in this God 
had taken the reins from his wilful and unworthy hands ; and that 
exceeding great and bitter cry lifted up by the hunter son, which 
has woke its echo in all hearts in all the passing years, form a most 
pathetic story. 

Esau s cry is another exhibition of his passive, hopeless yielding 
to the pressure of circumstances, a trait inherited from Isaac: 
“ Bless me, even me also, O my father ! ” he entreats, and each 
heart entreats with him, moved by his pathos. He bewails his fate 
from his birth hour to the present. He cries, “ Hast thou not re- 
served a blessing for me ? ” 

The partial old parent had never thought of reserving a blessing 
for the subtle Jacob ; and in dismay he enumerates what he has 
under a mistake bestowed. 

Still with weeping comes that prayer : “ Hast thou but one 
blessing, O my father ? Bless me also, O my father ! ” 

Then was Isaac enabled to give his hunter son the very bless- 
ing that suited him best ; the very one he had use for; the blessing 
of earthly power and abundance ; the posssession of families and 
treasure ; the dew of heaven from above ; the fatness of earth be- 
neath ; the blessing of the strong arm and the glittering sword ; 
domination resented ; the yoke broken. The heart of Esau revived, 
when he found that in Jacob’s blessing the very good he valued most 
had been omitted, had been left for him. However, he was angry 


104 


JACOB AND ESAU. 


with his brother, and treasured up against him the hot memory 
of his bitter cry and tears. He consoled himself with hope of 
vengeance, and turned to his sword to vindicate him. Therefore 
Rebekah sent Jacob from her until wrath should be past. With 
his usual submissiveness Isaac resigns himself to what has hap- 
pened. He sees in Jacob his theocratic heir, renews his blessing, 
and sends him away, portionless but hopeful. 

Esau having found that his marriages have been displeasing to 
his parents ; a matter which previously had not presented itself 
to his inconsiderate heart; with his natural recklessness, and 
entire ignorance of righteousness, or propriety, takes his cousin 
Mahalath, the daughter of Ishmael, for his third wife. Esau 
could not see that this but made a bad matter worse ; he thought 
the proceeding a beautiful concession to family feeling. It took 
powerful impressions to make this man understand anything ; in 
all these years he had not perceived any wrong in his heathen- 
ish marriages. He is the type of the low and earthly mind, 
clogged with its earthliness, even in its highest ideals. 

Jacob fleeing from Beersheba to Haran comes to Luz, and lies 
down to rest on the barren stony hillside. Here he meets the 
most wonderful experience of his life ; the one which re-creates 
him, and sends him on his way a new man. 

Behold, say some, the favoritism of God ! Esau, robbed and 
miserable, had a much better right to comfort than Jacob. But 
not so. This was a kind of comfort that Esau would not have 
valued. Jacob had, and cherished capacity for the spiritual. 
Esau did not desire anything of the kind. As to favoritism, 
during the course of these two brothers on earth, the odds are in 
favor of Esau. He remains in his native home ; he serves no 
man; he is rich; he does just as he pleases; he lords it royally 
over his neighbors, friend and foe ; we hear of no troubles in his 
family life; five sons become the ancestors of royal lines of dukes, 


JACOB AND ESAU. 


105 


that “ were kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before there 
reigned any king over the children of Israel,” and who had 
“ their habitations in the land of their possession.” 

The favoritism extended to Jacob visited with chastisement all 
his sins, in this life. We behold in him exhibited the eternal and 
needful connection between crime and its penalty. He strove 
with Esau, and his twelve sons strove among themselves; he 
demanded an oath from his hungry brother, and he saw his sons 
Simeon and Levi despising an oath, fierce in wrath, cruel in 
anger, self-willed, and making him odious in the land of his 
sojourn ; he coveted Esau’s richest possession, and Laban coveted 
his goods, and changed his wages ten times; he deceived his 
father and Laban, and after that his own children deceived him ; 
he wore Esau’s coat, and had poor Joseph’s bloody garment 
spread before him ; he finds himself cheated in a wife, and re- 
solved not to resign his idolized Rachel, he yields to the crime of 
polygamy, and has in his home the strife of sister-wives ; the con- 
cubines and their sons, the diverse children of so many unions, 
and the shame and horror of Reuben’s defilement. When at last 
he gets rest in the cave of Machpelah, it is not by Rachel or his 
concubines, but beside the one wife whom God had ordained for 
him, Leah, the ancestress of Christ. 

The rejection of Esau, referred only to the headship of the 
nation, the priesthood and the progenitorship of Jesus. There is 
no reason for supposing that God rejected Isaac’s first-born from 
salvation. “He found no place for repentance, though he sought 
it carefully and with tears,” does not refer to his seeking soul- 
safety, and finding none ; but to his great and bitter cry after the 
birthright, which he had deliberately sold to his brother. He 
sought the first-born’s relinquished blessing with tears, after it 
was irretrievably gone from him. God’s “loving” and “hating,” 
moreover, refer to his sovereign choice between these two for the 


106 


JACOB AND ESAU. 


recipient of the covenant blessing, of ancestorship of Messiah. 
We make no reference to any other, or further choosing of the 
Divine Owner and Disposer of all things ; we consider but this 
case immediately in hand ; and when Esau the hunter and the 
careless is older, we find God evidently operating pbwerfully upon 
his mind, and impelling him to meet his penitent brother with a 
royal love and generosity. 

Perhaps on the night when Jacob strove at Jabbok, not for 
himself alone, but for his brother, Esau obtained such an experi- 
ence in proportion to his spiritual ability, as Jacob had at Bethel 

Jacob reached Luz the unconverted man, tortured by a know- 
ledge of some better life than he possessed, yearning for it, and 
groping blindly. As he lay on the hill-slope, a stone for his 
pillow, and his staff by his side, too wretched to sleep, the starry 
worlds sweeping in their infinite altitude above these ripples of 
time, mocked in their purity and peace his fever-tossed souk 
Looking up into the solemn and mysterious quietude of that 
purple, star-set sky, he realized how far was his life from God ; 
how far from the models of Abraham and Isaac ; this passion- 
tossed adventurer cried out for the Lord. He longed with deeper 
apprehension of its meaning, for that holy fellowship with Him 
who had set the starry feet of Orion to pace their rounds along 
the Syrian sky in unapproached splendor : star after star rising 
and setting, wheeling out of sight, carried his humbled spirit 
along with it toward that throne of God, the centre of the uni- 
verse. Wearied out he slept, and in that blessed slumber came 
the celestial vision. He beheld a ladder, the humanity of Christ, 
reaching between earth and heaven ; a ladder, type of the Days- 
man, who can lay one hand on the dust-bowed head of his wor- 
shipper, and with the other take hold of the Eternal throne of the 
Father; on this symbolic ladder, the angels of God’s rich mer- 
cies passed to and fro ; only by Christ can they come ! Moreover, 


JACOB AND ESAU. 


107 


above this ladder, framed of light, stood Jehovah -Jesus, proclaim- 
ing and confirming the covenant of Abraham and Isaac. Thus 
Jacob recognized the house of God, and here he vowed and 
worshipped. 

There is but one great saving work of God — Faith. One sole 
saving act — Faith : into this now had Jacob come. 

The next tremendous, far-reaching experience of Jacob is, after 
more than twenty years, at the ford of Jabbok, on his return to 
Canaan from his long exile. 

Jacob, the lone wanderer, has become a mighty prince. He has 
a countlfess train of flocks and herds ; oxen, asses, and camels, 
with servants to care for them, and food sufficient for his house- 
hold; his camels are laden with tent furniture and goodly 
raiment; he has two wives, two concubines, and eleven sons. 
With native caution he advances over the lengthening plain. His 
youth’s sowing of greedy distrust is bringing now a harvest of 
fear and care. Far out of sight, yet approaching this caravan, 
comes the band of Esau from his abode ; Esau, the warrior and 
hunter, with four hundred armed men at his beck ; every one 
strong, bold, and well equipped. 

Jacob shows his changed disposition in that he now betakes 
himself to prayer instead of fraud. He does his best for the 
safety of his dependants, then flies to the Strong for strength, to 
the Defender for defence. 

Jacob has been drawn from Mesopotamia by homesick desire ; 
he has received no recall, no intimation that the old time danger 
is gone. He sends a propitiatory present, a gift of penitence 
and restitution ; this, and his meeting with the hosts of God give 
him courage with regard to Esau ; he thereafter strives with the 
angel for a deeper internal realization of the divine life, and for a 
higher spiritual appreciation of the promises. In this struggle his 
strength is that very core and heart of his nature — adherence to 


108 


JACOB AND ESAU. 


faith in the future ; as this deep spiritual strife draws to its close, 
Jacob’s human strength and courage are gone, withered by the 
angel’s potent touch ; but his divine strength rises to its loftiest 
altitude in utter self-renunciation ; the crowning purpose of his 
soul, the obtaining of the celestial blessing, cries out in speech ; he 
clings all the closer for the words, “Let me go.” The kingdom 
of heaven suffereth violence; Jacob is of the violent who take it 
by force ; and he wrests from his spiritual antagonist a blessing, 
and a new name, Israel — prevailing Prince. In the ardor and 
boldness of his soul-victory, he seeks more than God will grant ; 
the name of that man — that Divine Man. “ It is secret,” says 
“the angel of the Lord’s face.” Later by half a century, he 
learned what he sought; and the name of Shiloh was whispered 
by the Spirit into an ear dulled to the sounds of earth. 

In the hour when Jacob, in the presence of the Angel of the 
Incarnation, had made a vast step onward in the spiritual life, 
Esau had come to a sense of the glory and need of forgiveness, 
and that most miserable day of strife and division in Isaac’s 
home, when the couch of the patriarch became a second Mount 
Moriah, when in the words, “ Yea, and he shall be blessed,” he 
offered as a sacrifice to God his preference for his first-born; 
when Rebekah with heroic wisdom sent forth her beloved to find 
a pious wife — is counterbalanced by this ardent, loving, generous 
meeting between these two long-separated brothers. Having 
humiliated himself before God, Jacob humbles himself to Esau ; 
reconciled to God, the brothers are reconciled to each other. 
Here was the resurrection morning of their life, old things had 
passed away, and all things had become new. 

At Hebron Jacob and Esau, with filial love, closed the long 
sightless eyes of Isaac their father ; laying him to solemn rest in 
the cave of Machpelah, they stood, as Isaac and Ishmael had done, 
friends by their father’s grave. Then the wealthy Esau, with 


JACOB AND ESAU.' 


109 


the greatest cordiality, moved his vast possessions to Mount Seir, 
that he might give Jacob free possession of the promised land. 

Another tender scene of the history is, when Jacob, in his old 
age an exile for the second time — Jacob, who had seen the host of 
God at Mahanaim, is set before the king of Egypt. He says to 
Aphophis, “ Few and evil have the days of my life been.” 

His closing years were peace, the troubles of his life died out 
like great waves when the storms have passed by ; the spirit of 
prophecy was in him, and he saw the future glory arising from 
bondage, as morning from night ; he saw the Redeemer of Israel 
and the Gentiles, in his first advent of humility, in his second 
coming with power. 

Jacob, the supplanter, had been the cunning man of strife ; 
Israel, the prevailing prince, was a man of peace. 

In his last hours Jacob does not fall into the grand error of 
Isaac’s life. Again, God has decreed that the elder shall serve 
the younger ; and Jacob recognizing this, when he comes to bless 
the sons of Joseph, guides his hands wittingly, crossing his aged 
arms, on their way to those bowed heads. It is Rebekah’s saga- 
city, shining out in the dying moments of her son ! 

This Prince with God, Jacob the converted, Jacob the product 
of grace, goes to his grave mourned by his kindred, and by the 
land of Mizraim. 

“ Chariots and horsemen, a very great company,” go up with 
his embalmed body toward the cave of Machpelah. The Canaan- 
ites see this wonderful mourning as for a king ; the elders of the 
land of Egypt wail at the threshing floor of Atad seven days, 
with all the pomp and circumstance of Eastern woe. And thus 
the last of the three great patriarchs is gathered to his fathers. 


V. 


JOSEPH. 

THE PROFITS OF GODLINESS. 


ODLINESS,” writes the Apostle Paul to Timothy, “ is 
profitable unto all things, having promise of the life which 
now is, and of that which is to come.” 

Between the Flood and the Advent, Godliness espe- 
cially received the promise of worldly prosperity. The rule 
that wealth and security should follow a godly life was so general, 
that when Job, in his hour of trial, became its exception, his 
three friends, evidently wise men in their day, could only refer 
his troubles to some secret sin, some flagrant dereliction known 
only to his God, and by Him chastised. 

“ Remember,” pleads Eliphaz the Temanite, “ I pray thee, 
who ever perished being innocent ; or where were the righteous 
cut off?” If Eliphaz had lived under this dispensation of the 
last days, he would have found more chances and changes in 
heaven and earth than were dreamt of in his philosophy. How- 
ever, when this long-bearded, long-lived logician, discoursed of 
the righteous, that “ he would be in league with the stones of the 
field ; the beasts of the field would be at peace with him ; and he 
should come to his grave in old age like a shock of corn fully 
ripe,” he reasoned very well from the data within his reach. 

In those earlier ages, God set before the world his sovereignty, 

by crowning his servants with every earthly blessing, that all 
110 



JOSEPH. 


Ill 


men might recognize Him as the ruler and possessor of the 
bounty and richness of the universe. In these later days the 
particular promise is for the spiritual gift ; contentment in adver- 
sity, confidence in the midst of trial; faith in darkness and woe; 
and a celestial peace and patience, taking hold on the heavenly. 

Joseph, in the early Scripture history, stands forth as a sym- 
metrical, beautiful, and nearly perfect Christian character. He 
was one, who climbing heavenward with swift, sure steps, at the 
same time strode up the steep ascent of earthly greatness ; and, 
arrived at the height of human pomp and power, wore his holy 
humility and grace about him like the nimbus of the gods ; in 
every act and word, shining upon men in the pure and singular 
beauty of his godliness. 

From the thirty-seventh chapter of Genesis, the history of 
Jacob lives on in that of his sons, the heads of all the tribes of 
Israel, the chosen race, appointed by God to show his mercy and 
his justice, and to type the Church of the Living in all coining 
time. The history of Jacob the man, broadens into that of Israel 
the people: and the history of Israel the people, swells into 
mighty significance as the history of the Church; a history 
gathering and growing, and rolling on in its splendor and wonder, 
through that utterly incomprehensible something, which men 
name often — and Scripture but four times — Eternity. 

Among these twelve sons, the history of two was of the greatest 
moment: of Judah, that the genealogy of Messiah might be 
traced; of Joseph, because through him came the mightiest 
changes, the most important events, in the annals of the nation. 

The history of Joseph is a triple cord : there runs through it 
the genesis of Israel in Egypt ; the development of special provi- 
dences bringing good out of evil, and the exhibition of the 
Profits of Godliness : the rewards which in this life follow the 
practice of virtue. 


112 


JOSEPH. 


Joseph stands at a great turning point in the Israelitish history ; 
not merely as marking their descent into that bondage which 
was to prepare the way for the conquest of Canaan, but because 
with him the shepherd nomads enter into the splendid civilization 
of Egypt. The children of Jacob are for long years the pupils 
of the most learned, refined and artistic nation then existing ; and 
the Church in Israel lays hold of the wisdom and culture of the 
world as a robe for her adornment. Hereafter the religious 
Hebrew spirit is entwined with Egyptian art and literature. 

From birth Joseph was a marked character — as his father says 
long after, he was separate from his brethren. The first especial 
mention of this son of Jacob’s age reveals the lad as a person of 
wonderful naivete and simplicity, and also of great moral earnest- 
ness. He accepts and rejoices in the promises of the future ; and 
expects every one else to do the same ; he hates sin as sin. 

Being seventeen years old, the youth is taken from the child- 
life he has enjoyed in the tents, and set as a shepherd boy under 
his half brothers, the sons of the concubines ; his father prefers 
Joseph in his heart, but metes out justice in act, giving him no 
undue advantage. In the company of these brothers Joseph soon 
discerns their evil nature; he sees their ungodly character, and 
speaks of it to his father ; thus four of his brothers are turned 
against him. After this, Jacob dressed his favorite in a robe of 
peculiar richness and beauty ; it has been thought that this garment 
was a token that he intended the spiritual birthright and family 
headship to be bestowed upon this son. This view of the case was 
probably taken by the elder brethren, the six sons of Leah ; who 
by their priority, and from the fact that they were the offspring of 
the first wife, resented their father’s preference, and revenged it by 
warring against Joseph. In this manner the ten brothers, and 
doubtless their three mothers, were rendered hostile to Joseph, and 
he found in his own home no friends but his father and the child 


JOSEPH. 


113 


Benjamin. To comfort him in this trial, and give him hope in 
the years to come, while he was being matured by privations, he 
received two dreams, each tokening his future lofty estate. The 
dreams coming from God, and expressing the Divine intention, 
were very welcome to this youth devoid of spite or envy, and he 
simply expected his brothers to accept the will of God, and admire 
the promise as much as he did himself. Although his brothers 
could not speak peaceably to him, this genial boy ran to them with 
his dreams, unconscious of the malice and jealousy of which the 
depraved heart is capable. The brethren again read the sign us 
referring to the birthright, an inheritance which with the passing 
years was growing an object of greater and greater moment to the 
chosen house. These men, resolved that what each chiefly craved 
should not go to the boy brother, undertook to outwit heaven by dis- 
posing of Joseph. We see here how wicked men overreach them- 
selves. Judah was the person to whom that birthright should 
descend ; but instead of making common cause against him, they 
turned their enmity upon one who was destined to uphold and in- 
crease the immediate glory and prosperity of the whole family. 
Jacob with mingled feelings soothed his perturbed elder sons, and 
mildly rebuked the younger; but 7 he hid the portents in his heart, 
to see whereunto they would grow. Jacob had had his experience, 
and learned what it is to hasten on before the solemn march of 
divine Providence. 

Joseph’s sagacious condemnation of his brothers’ character, and 
his straightforward narration of his dream, mark the moral earnest- 
ness of his disposition. What was right was his first question. 
Righteousness was the ideal of his soul, the one cherished object 
of his life. This moral earnestness was the root of his self-reliance 
and force of character ; which in every phase of his history marked 
him out as the man for high position, great responsibilities, and 
therefore great honors. This moral earnestness was a drop of honey 
8 


114 


JOSEPH. 


in his being, while his brothers were permeated with the gall of 
envy; most miserable emotion, which, as says iEschylus, in “Aga- 
memnon,” so tortures man that 

“ Of inward pain the heavy load he bears, 

At sight of joy without he mournetli ever.” 

By Jacob and Moses, Joseph is mentioned as a Nazarite ; a con- 
secrated or separated one ; and among his turbulent brothers he 
stands a boy prophet, uttering presages of the future; simple as a 
child; prudent as a patriarch of many days; so generous and 
noble, that he is set a precious type of Jesus, the Saviour of a 
world. 

The life of Joseph has three periods : his childhood, in Hebron, 
at his father’s side, including his first seventeen years ; his servi- 
tude in Egypt, embracing the next thirteen ; and his eighty years 
of splendor, at the helm of state in the kingdom of Mizraim. 

In the first period his obedience, purity and earnestness, made 
him his father’s favorite; secured him long protection and tender- 
ness by that father’s side, and clad him in the robe of honor, dear 
as a sign of parental approbation ; here, also, he received from 
heaven those two golden visions which were well-springs of confi- 
dence for the future. Thus growing in wisdom and stature in 
Hfebron, Joseph the boy learned the profits of godliness in the favor 
of God and good men. 

Between the close of the first era in Joseph’s life, his boyhood 
at home, and the second era, his slavery in exile, we have a truly 
Oriental picture. We behold nine of the sons of Jacob seated 
under the shade of Dothan’s spreading trees to eat their noonday 
meal. Their flocks graze in peace about them, wading deep in 
the lush, green herbage, sweet with blossoms. Far other than 
peace is the emotion of the patriarch’s sons ; they look askance at 
each other ; remorseless hatred glows upon the faces of the children 
of the concubines. Reuben, the firstborn of the house, has left 


JOSEPH. 


115 


them, Simeon and Levi, whose “ habitations are cruelty,” have 
resolved to let an evil deed go on; Judah is in conflict between 
horror of a mighty crime, desire of amity with his elder brothers, 
and secret displeasure against Rachel’s son. Issachar and Zebu- 
lun showed the spirit their father, years later, indicated in his 
blessing; they side with the majority, and now the majority is for 
murder, for fratricide. Joseph, the son preferred, the dreamer of 
dreams, and the wearer of the gorgeous robe, token of parental par- 
tiality, Joseph, suddenly fallen from happiness and hope, exhausted 
with struggles, prayers and fruitless cries for help, is cast down 
into a pit near at hand. The agitated elder brothers, as they 
make pretence of eating, look here and there ; and now one spies 
a low, dark line, creeping along the edge of the eastern sky. The 
heavens are like a dome of burnished brass, the air quivers with 
the hot noon ; beyond the verdant, watered plain of Dothan, 
stretches a broad dry waste ; and through it runs the highway 
winding from Beisan to Ramleh. This creeping line assumes 
definite shape ; the brothers see that it is a caravan, bound to 
the land of the Pharaohs. 

From the balm-dropping forests of Gilead the Ishmaelites 
heading their tributary Midianites are going to the granary of 
the world, Nile-enriched Egypt, to exchange luxuries for bread. 
The camels of these traders are loaded with “spicery, balm and 
myrrh.” The forests of the mountain Gilead have yielded them 
sweet-scented woods ; they carry also the world-renowned balm, 
which the prophet has chosen as a type forever sacred, of the 
heavenly consolation. They have gathered the gum-tragacanth 
of Syria, the fragrant rose of the cistus, and heavy weight of rare 
spices, craved in Egypt for the embalming of the dead. Removed 
from the odorous forest glades and sunny defiles, these precious 
spices are carried on the long journey across the scorching plains 
to find their last use and hiding in the grim mausoleums of Egyp- 


116 


JOSEPH. 


tian princes. Out of life, out of the realm of blossoming flowers, 
the stirring of the perfumed breezes, the murmuring of bees, and 
the ecstatic carolling of birds, they are going down to the region 
and shadow of death, the dark, rock-hewn, last abodes, of the .wor- 
shippers of Isis and Osiris. But mingled in this advancing train 
are dark lithe forms in humble guise ; these Ishmaelites deal in 
men as well as in balm and spice ; they carry slaves for Egypt s 
living princes, when they take her myrrh for her dead. Nearer 
and nearer they come ; they will pass not far from the resting and 
unrestful shepherds ; the tortured transgressors watch the 
strangers’ motions, with that intent desire the wicked feel to find 
some external interest to distract them from the thoughts of their 
sins. Suddenly Judah speaks. Beuben has gone away, appar- 
ently despairing because he may not save his brother; Judah 
can not be reconciled to the quick shedding of blood, or the 
greater cruelty of leaving the lad to die in the agonies of thirst 
and hunger in the dry pit. He sees a third resource : “ Come,” 
says he, “ let us sell him to these Ishmaelites. Let not our hand 
be upon him, for he is our brother, and our flesh ; what profit 
shall it be to slay him, and conceal his blood ? ” 

The brothers spring up with alacrity ; their difficulty is solved : 
the slave in Egypt will never win the birthright ; their revenge 
will be sweet and perfect ; no avenger of blood can dog their foot- 
steps; Beuben and Judah can never betray them as murderers. 
They cannot sell him in that princely guise ; they tear off the coat, 
object of their envy ; they sell the grandson of Isaac to the de- 
scendants of Ishmael. Slowly the caravan, passing south and 
west, winds out of sight, leaving the air sweet with its perfume, 
carrying with it one slave more, the weeping favorite of Jacob. 

When Jacob’s sons returned to their father at Hebron with 
their report of Joseph’s death, and his bloody robe as their token, 
the grief of the old man was inconsolable. There was self-re- 


JOSEPH. 


117 


k 

proach. for sending the lad so far alone ; anguish for loss of one so 
dear ; but, bitterest element in the father’s grief, we see his sus- 
picion of his elder sons ; suspicions which he cannot and will not 
speak, but which, for twenty-two years, corrode his heart', until 
the dark day when Simeon has disappeared, and Benjamin is de- 
manded, and he cries in terror and pain, “ Me, have ye bereaved 
of my children.” Truly the sting of death is sin. This thought 
of sin darkens all Jacob’s hope of the future ; he, in his hour of 
agony, is no longer Israel, the prevailing prince ; he loses, at the 
moment, both the loving endurance which shines in Isaac, and 
the hopeful energy of Abraham ; faith and promise, the two cor- 
related factors of the saints below, are lost out of Jacob’s life for 
the time, and he cries out, “ I will go down into the grave mourn- 
ing unto my son ! ” He will not seek him among the saints re- 
deemed, whom Enoch saw in vision, but he will go to him into 
th/it dreary, earthy, unlighted future of the heathen, Sheol , the 
land of shadows, to “ Hades, awful and unseen.” 

After this loss of Joseph, while with hypocritical sorrow the 
sons of Jacob strove to comfort their mourning sire, Judah sepa- 
rated from his brethren, and went to dwell among the people of 
the land. Here falls that singular shadow over the family history 
of Judah, the ancestor of Messiah, where the royal heir of Jacob 
shows in such dark contrast to the chaste and godly Joseph. But 
through temptation, downfall, trial, repentance, and self-conflict, 
Judah reaches that magnificent fulness of character, which marks 
him worthy his place in history, sire of a line of kings, root of an 
everlasting empire. Beside this man, whose goodness and glory 
bloom late, like an aloe or a century plant, the early spirituality 
and placid self-reliance of Joseph, are like the lilies and roses that 
crown a passing summer. 

Meantime, we follow Joseph in his exile : lonely and terrified 
as he is, the youth, with boyhood’s bouyaney, finds interest and 


118 


JOSEPH. 


consolation in the varied ‘experiences of his journey. He recalls 
his father’s progress from Laban’s Syrian home to Hebron; he 
yearns for his loving father and the baby brother — and how deep 
that fraternal tenderness is, we can see in those after years when 
he falls on Benjamin’s neck, and, sobbing, kisses him. But the 
beautiful mother is. in her early grave, and no craving for her 
smile and blessing can intensify the bitterness of the exile’s lot. 

The land of Egypt is reached, and Potiphar, Captain of the 
Guard, selects Joseph, the handsomest of the slaves, as his own 
purchase. This man was the “ chief of the executioners ” — says 
Lange, “ first of the eunuchs,” says Knobel, “ chief cook to the 
king,” pronounces Josephus ; the position first assumed, his au- 
thority over the prisons, and the captaincy of the executioners, is 
doubtless correct. 

Joseph had brought his best friend to Egypt with him ; the 
Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, was ever present to his 
youthful servant, and the profits of godliness were patent in all 
the lad’s life. As when Jacob entered Laban’s dwelling, new 
prosperity flowed in upon the abode of the half-idolatrous Syrian ; 
as the Ark of God brought celestial benedictions to the home of 
Obed-edom, thus Potiphar experienced new affluence and happi- 
ness ; and so marked was the period and manner of his unusual 
successes, that he attributed it to a divine blessing following the 
presence and labor of his Shemitic slave. 

Purity and simplicity had adorned Joseph in life’s first era, and 
he had realized their profits ; in his estate of serfdom and exile he 
recognized still more the advantages of a godly walk and conver- 
sation. He found grace in his master’s eyes ; he was like a son 
rather than a servant ; he was made the ruler of the household, 
there was none greater than himself, whatever he did was good ; 
the Lord blessed him alike in house and field ; all that belonged to 
Potiphar was put into Joseph’s hand, and none questioned what 


JOSEPH. 


110 


he did. Thus the lad passed ten years, and went from youth to 
the vigorous maturity of early manhood. The house of Potiphar 
was his training school for the prime ministership of Egypt. 
Here the son of the nomad learned the arts, the courtliness, the 
necessities of those who dwell in cities. The home of the Captain 
of the Guard was one of Egypt’s gorgeous palaces, rich in paint- 
ings and sculpture, full of feasting and slaves, fragrant with per- 
fumes, gleaming with gems and gold. Here Joseph had his busi- 
ness training, and developed the germs of that far-sighted policy 
which made him afterwards the king’s right hand, and the real 
head of Egypt. 

“ Joseph was a goodly person and well favored,” says the Scrip- 
ture. A love of physical beauty was deeply imbedded in the 
Hebrew mind ; the instinct of the race was aesthetic and poetical, 
and forbidden the pictures and sculptures in which other nations 
early excelled and delighted, the Hebrew turned with profound 
admiration and joy to charms of person and demeanor. Joseph 
was the living image of Rachel, long famed as one of the most 
beautiful of women ; a creature of such rare type as Rebekah, 
Esther, Judith, and Mary of Nazareth. “Joseph sanctum pul- 
chrum corpore , pulchriorem mente,” says St. Augustine, and it was 
this excelling beauty of the mind which rendered the physical 
beauty so transcendant. Holiness, confidence, peace, love, rayed 
from each feature ; frank, upright, joyous, his slavery was an un- 
felt fetter, his exile was a forgotten pain : his dearer Father was 
ever with him ; the Spirit indwelling compensated him for sun- 
dered fraternal ties ; heaven bent as near the fertile vale of Egypt 
as it did over Hebron and Shechem. 

But while Joseph experienced the profits of godliness each day, 
he was strengthened and ennobled by trials : he had been tried by 
unjust enmity, by parental partiality, by great success and pros- 
perity in a usually painful position ; now he was tried by the al- 


120 


JOSEPH. 


lurements of flattery and lawless love. “ The stranger which 
flatters with her words,” met him, “ with her much fair speech to 
cause him to err.” But all that guileful persuasion which Solo- 
mon had, centuries later, to record, fell unheeded on Joseph’s ear. 
The judgment of the Lord is the touchstone to which he applies 
everything. Like gold the single-hearted probity of the man 
shines forth as he says to the bold enchantress, “ How can I do 
this great wickedness, and sin against God ? ” 

From this scene in Joseph’s life John Bunyan drew his picture 
of Standfast and Madame Bubble. This Standfast was one who 
went down into death’s river amid a great calm, and standing 
“ easy ” in the waters of the stream “ that has been a terror to 
many,” held converse, his feet fixed on “ that whereon the priests 
that bare the Ark of* the Covenant stood, when Israel went over 
Jordan.” Another trial comes to refine yet more beautifully the 
fine gold of Joseph’s character. He should now reach the profits 
of his godliness through a fire. “ For this is thankworthy, if a 
man for conscience toward God, endure grief, suffering wrong- 
fully.” Thus Joseph suffered. “ But if, when ye do well, and 
suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.” 
Thus was Joseph patient; and from the history we can see that 
the sting lay in Potiphar’s condemning Joseph, knowing him to he 
innocent. 

Doubtless the Captain of the Guard, with ten years’ experience 
to guide him, was acute enough to discern right and wrong be- 
tween his accusing wife, and his favored slave. If he had 
believed Joseph guilty, the severe laws of Egypt would demand 
his death ; but if he, following his conviction, pronounced him 
innocent, the sentence would reproach and condemn his own 
household. With the calm selfishness of an Eastern despot, he 
makes up his mind to sacrifice the servant, whose personal attrac- 
tions doubtless rouse him to some envy. His wrath was kindled, 


JOSEPH. 


121 


the history does not say, against Joseph; but he had cause for 
rage, and the most suitable victim was the foreign bondman. 
Yet even here, he cannot carry his fury very far ; he puts Joseph 
in prison, deprives him pf office and emoluments ; but he puts 
him in the king’s prison, where great men are put; and there 
presently the captive experiences the profits of his godliness, for 
he gets the freedom of his house of bondage ; is given office and 
employment, and in the capacity of an unsalaried sub-warden he 
is free to exercise the philanthropy and wisdom of his soul. 

“ Better,” saith Solomon, “ is a poor and wise child, than an 
old and foolish king ... for out of prison he cometh to reign.” 
This young stranger was preparing for the real royalty of the 
mightiest kingdom in the world. The prison was to Joseph the 
path to the throne ; the destinies of Egypt, and of all the tribes 
that cried to her for corn, hung evenly balanced between safety 
and destruction, and only the hand of Joseph laid upon the scale 
should assure the life of nations. 

But for a career of such dazzling splendor, such unlimited 
power, a man must be fitly trained in God’s School of Tribulation 
and Experience, or his success should prove his destruction. To 
all the trials gone before — hatred, indulgence, contempt, pros- 
perity, false accusation, the charms of the Siren that killeth souls, 
unjust punishment — was added the cruel sting of ingratitude. 
A ray of hope came to the captive when he solaced the misery, 
and predicted the joyous future of the king’s cupbearer. To him 
he told his unhappy story, praying, “ Think on me when it shall 
be well with thee, and shew kindness, I pray thee, unto me, and 
make mention of me to Pharaoh; and bring me out of this house.” 
The conclusion of the story of his hope, the fading of its trem- 
bling ray into despair, is an epitome of the history of half the 
benefactors and clients upon earth, “ Yet did not the chief butler 
remember Joseph, but forgat him.” 


122 


JOSEPH. 


It was the last strong flame scorching the true soul in God’s 
crucible, and it proved, for “ two full years,” the temper of 
Joseph’s spirit. 

Thus the second era of his life, that of slavery and imprison- 
ment, passes away. As in his boyhood’s home, he had been of 
sons most cherished and honored ; so of prisoners and slaves he 
had on the whole the happiest history, the most favors, and the 
best ameliorations of a trying lot. 

One hour swept him from Pharaoh’s prison to the side of 
Pharaoh’s throne ; from being servant of servants, he became lord 
of lords. He types in this, as in many other phases of his blame- 
less life, Jesus, in the hour of his humiliation, and the supreme 
ages of his exaltation. 

The prophetic, dream-interpreting spirit, with which from early 
years he had been endowed, became the means of the grand 
change in his fortunes. 

One moment he languishes in the prison, sick of heart ; pining 
for the dear freedom of those Syrian plains ; the simple pleasures 
of the tent life ; the flocks of sheep ; the stately droves of camels ; 
the grave old family servants, who watched, like so many parents, 
his buoyant youth ; his father’s heartful blessing. Oh, to be free ! 
He cries after freedom like a child’s lamenting for its mother. 

A stir at the gate. A messenger post haste from the royal 
abode of the Hamitic autocrat. Rameses, among his people like 
a god, summons the bound soothsayer to read him the riddle of 
his dream. 

At once Joseph throws aside his weakness of longing, and is a 
man. He has lived so long with Potiphar, that he knows how 
he shall order himself to approach a king. Nor is Potiphar a 
whit behind: he likes Joseph; secretly pities him; he sees in 
him now a future possible stepping-stone to greatness; or, alas! a 
possible ruin, if the king’s whim sets the servant above his whilom 
lord, and Joseph is resentful ! 


JOSEPH. 


123 


Therefore Joseph cuts and trims the long disordered locks. He 
is provided with becoming raiment. Those who came for him 
are hasty and. excijted. Joseph, calm in prosperity as in his grief, 
meets them with dignity and grace ; and as he had in his misery 
let his hair and beard grow long, after the Egyptian custom of 
mourning, he tarries now for a little, that he may go to the king 
in the guise of joy. 

“And Joseph was thirty years old when he stood before 
Pharaoh.” He was a prince in grace and beauty; wise as a seer; 
polished like the most accomplished of the despot’s courtiers ; so 
evidently imbued with divine spirit, that the astonished lord of 
the race of Ham asks of his attendants : “ Can we find such an 
one as this is, a man in whom the Spirit of God is ? ” 

When the Lord’s time has come to act, he makes quick work 
of it. Short space was between the black door of the prison and 
the court shining in scarlet, gold and blue, those deathless tints, 
which glow upon our eyes to-day, in their resurrection after 
centuries of hiding, in Egyptian sepulchres. 

“ I have dreamed a dream ! ” cries Pharaoh, in terror and 
excitement. “ I have heard say of thee, that thou canst under- 
stand a dream to interpret it.” 

Joseph can never go anywhere unless his God goes first; he 
now sets evidently forth the directing providence of the Power 
he serves. “ It is not in me : God shall give Pharaoh an answer 
of peace.” 

Thus sheltered behind the aegis of his Holy One, Joseph is not 
dazzled by earthly pomp and displays. His calm soul can fix 
itself upon the king’s narration ; and, unallured by the magnifi- 
cence around him, he sets his mind, not on his own liberation or 
reward, not on the scenes new to his eyes ; but on the singular 
providence revealed in these dreams ; on the wonders of the divine 
plan ; and on the great possibility of saving a nation, lying in the 


124 


JOSEPH. 


most imminent danger. His swift, heaven-instructed thought 
takes in all that is needed ; the plan to be pursued ; the demand 
for an overseer ; and all the perfection of that simple, yet stupen- 
dous project for saving half the known world from the jaws of 
destruction. 

Mark it, Joseph has been asked for exegesis, but not for exhorta- 
tion ! He has been required to unravel, but not to advise; 
without the slightest idea of his own aggrandizement, he makes 
haste to charge the mute, amazed king, as to what should be 
done to turn this foreknowledge to the best possible account. 
Wisdom from above shines through every syllable of that golden 
address. No wonder that, bending from the splendors of his 
royal couch, Aphophis exclaims : “ There is none so discreet and 
wise as thou ; thou shalt be over my house ; according to thy 
word, shall all my people be ruled ; only in the throne will 1 be 
greater than thou ! ” 

Thus, by looking steadfast-eyed to the right; regarding the 
good of the world rather than his own fortunes ; setting forth the 
honor of his God before all things else, Joseph the prisoner 
becomes Joseph the prosperous. 

Happy, but indeed seldom to be found among the children of 
men, is he who can, in the midst of sudden and unusual prosper- 
ity, possess his soul in calm humility. He only can do this, whose 
heart is stayed upon his God ; who has in sore adversity learned 
to look beyond the seen, to the Land of Delight, where no 
mildew rests on the unfolded blossom of our hope. 

Hidden in God’s good Providence, in safety during the evil 
day, as Noah was preserved in the ark, and David kept in security 
in the cave of Adullam, Joseph came from his prison, bearing the 
happy fruits of his time of trial ; purified and strengthened by its 
painful discipline, as was Moses by sojourn in Midian, David by 
exile, and Daniel by his captivity in Babylon. 


JOSEPH. 


125 


He went out from the presence of Pharaoh, with the seal ring 
of grand vizier on his hand ; the white byssus robe which marked 
his equality with the lofty rank of priests, and the golden collar 
of the judge about his neck. Thus was he presented to an 
obsequious people ; proclaimed as ruler by a new name ; made to 
ride in the second chariot of state, while before him went a runner, 
commanding all Egypt to bow the knee. 

Happy now in the confidence of a sovereign ; happy in being a 
fountain of good to all the people round about, Joseph makes the 
land of his exile the home of his adoption. He has no desire to 
return to nomad life in Palestine; a cosmopolite in the b«/.*st 
sense, he does not keep aloof from those among whom he lives ; a 
wise ruler, he propitiates his people by being of them ; he adopts 
their dress, manners, language; so that nine years later, his 
brethren consider him a true Egyptian. 

Joseph, at the head of a nation, is now also at the head of a 
family ; he marries Asenath, daughter of the chief priest of On. 
On is Heliopolis, the city of the sun ; the city and temple were 
sacred to Pa ; here by that magnificent temple was the college of 
the Priests ; and here were gathered the most learned men of 
Egypt, or, perhaps, of the world. 

Complaisant to the forms of his new country, Joseph is yet not 
lost in them. “ Strictly speaking,” says Helitzsch, “ it was an 
assumption of Egyptian modes, by one devoted to the religion of 
Jehovah.” 

During the seven years of plenty, Joseph became father of two 
sons. The first born he named Manasseh, because he had been 
“ caused to forget his own people and his father’s house.” 

For this expression Calvin blames Joseph, while Luther asks : 
“ Could it be right for him to forget his father’s house ? ” 

The subsequent history fully shows that the forgetting referred 
only to his ceasing to pine as an exile; to his having grown 


.126 . 


JOSEPH. 


content in a strange land. That he had not forgotten, is proven 
by the tender love that leaps out in the repeated question, 
“'Doth my father yet live?” and in his beautiful filial service in 
that father’s age. 

The name of Joseph’s second son indicates an increase of his 
contentment to joy : “ God,” he says, “ has made me fruitful in 
the land of my affliction.” 

Even this expression : “ The land of my sorrows,” shows a 
mournful tenderness toward Palestine, the promised inheritance 
of his race. 

The history of Joseph’s reconciliation with his brothers extends 
through four chapters ; this particular account shows that it is of 
great moment to the Church in all time. Indeed, as a record of 
human hopes, fears, struggles, repentance, chastisement, forgive- 
ness, light beaming out of darkness, it is most wonderful and 
beautiful, appealing to every heart. But it is more especially 
valuable as typing, in a variety of forms, the history and philoso- 
phy of Redemption. 

The twenty odd years of absence, in which the early piety of 
Joseph has grown so matured, and the change in his appearance 
and worldly circumstances has been so great, have not been with- 
out their influence on Joseph’s brothers. 

God has evidently visited in mercy the disunited house of 
Jacob, and has bowed and harmonized those turbulent sons of 
many wives. 

We left the brothers in the field of Dothan, murderous, deceit- 
ful, cruel, envious, timid — cowards in the right ; braggarts in the 
wrong. We find them now — when two years of famine have 
added to the lessons of the other years gone by — humble and 
obedient to their father ; penitent for their conduct to Joseph ; 
helpful and anxious for family safety ; true as steel to each other ; 
and every strong man among them a second parent to the youthful 


JOSEPH. 


127 


Benjamin. They have laid aside their insane prejudice against 
Rachel’s son ; they rejoice in him as the comfort of their beloved 
father’s declining years. 

This change which is manifest in them, is a thing unknown to 
Joseph ; and perhaps is not fully appreciated by the doating old 
parent. 

Luther, Keil, and many more, consider the course of Joseph 
toward his brothers as one merely of trial ; that he may, by learn- 
ing their present dispositions, ascertain how much kindness he 
may show them, and how he can best benefit his father and Ben- 
jamin, and promote the family interests. Kurtz, Lange, and 
others, view his words and acts as a strife between anger and gen- 
tleness ; and declare that to show Joseph as calmly, in the midst 
of his forgiveness, studying the characters of his brothers, would 
be to ascribe to him a superhuman holiness and perfection, quite 
above that intended in the Old Testament account. It is con- 
sidered that Joseph only by severe struggles reaches forgiveness 
toward them ; and that his wavering decisions and postponement 
of judgment show the tremendous moral contest in his own 
breast. 

We must however remember, that from the beginning of his 
career, Joseph was not merely human but godly; that he had in 
him largely-developed holy charity, that suffereth long and is 
kind; that he had the fruits of the Spirit, love, peace, joy; that 
every step of his life had been the development of a grand reli- 
gious nature. Moreover, the prudence which could sway all the 
varied and intricate affairs of Egypt, would teach him to move 
very cautiously in an affair so delicate and momentous. If these 
men were bad men, to give them countenance, power, wealth, 
would be to increase their means to do evil. Joseph yearned 
toward them as his brethren in the flesh ; but before he bade them 
welcome to his adopted home, he must know that they were 


128 


JOSEPH. 


brethren according to the spirit. Else, they might work ruin for 
themselves, disgrace for him, confusion in all the land of Pharaoh. 

Besides this, in the keeping of these brothers were the feeble old 
father and the helpless youth, Benjamin ; to secure a separation 
of these two and a transfer to his own care if needful, demanded 
even all the wisdom for which the discreet Joseph was famous. 
But if the ten brothers were true men, far be it from Joseph to 
divide them ; he would clasp them all to his great heart of love. 

Joseph had seen so clearly the leading hand of God in the 
persecutions and troubles of his early days, and had reaped so 
rich a reward for all his sufferings, that we cannot suppose that 
he retained any resentment toward those who, instead of being 
the occasions of his ruin, had proved to be only the foundation 
stones of his greatness. Lifted to the pinnacle of power in Egypt, 
blessed with all and everything that earth could bestow, Joseph 
had no need to sigh over the steps which led him in his upward 
way. 

It may be hard to forgive while suffering wrongfully ; it is 
easy, when that suffering has been the footstool to a throne ! 
If the brothers had come when Joseph languished in the prison 
house, and then, in his dark trial, he had forgiven them, we 
should call it a “ superhuman perfection beyond the Old Testa- 
ment standpoint/- reaching to that of Stephen, kneeling at the 
moment when, under the blows of his death missiles, he was 
being rapidly carried forward to the perfection and complete 
sanctification of the saints in glory. 

Standing as Joseph did, a godly man, whose bondage had 
blossomed into the primacy of the greatest realm on earth, we can 
easily understand how forgiveness filled all his heart. 

They had come ! journeying from Palestine, dusty, worn, and 
travel stained; the anxieties of famine written on their faces; 
every step of their way had been a step in fulfilment of that long 


JOSEPH. 


129 


lost brother’s early dreams. If instead of coming from Hebron 
or Shechem, they must needs have made their journey from the 
remotest bounds of earth, from the shores of the Eastern Sea, 
from the hot slopes of farther India, or the heights of distant 
Thibet, they would yet have been brought on their way by the 
irresistible drawings of that Divine decree, that they must come 
and bow themselves down before Joseph, the godly one. 

They were late indeed ; at least twenty-three years had elapsed 
between the dream and its fulfilment; they come, not because 
Joseph dreamed, but because God inwove his decrees in those 
visions of the night. So in the hearts of men, slumber, stir, 
awake, grow, and come to flower and fruitage, the germs of 
destiny. 

The ten stand before the ruler of Egypt. At his gracious and 
dignified presence, not only their knees bow, but their hearts ; 
they make not merely a ceremonious and compelled, but a volun- 
tary and most hearty obeisance. 

“ They knew him not.” Tears had moulded that boy brother 
to a princely manhood. The slender, weeping, struggling, plead- 
ing slave has developed to. a maturity of self-conscious power. 
They have envied him the many-hued coat; now he wears the 
fine linen of Egypt, worth its weight in gold ; and a kingdom’s 
ransom of gems gleams upon the person of Pharaoh s favorite, not 
adorning him, but by him adorned. 

“And Joseph saw his brothers, and knew them.” 

Every lineament of those haughty faces is written on his heart. 
The noble figure of Reuben, the' eldest ; the kingly bearing of 
Judah, the chosen Prince with God; the fiery countenances of 
those twin spirits, Simeon and Levi, hasty alike in ill and good ; 
the subtle eyes of Dan ; the indolent grace of Issachar ; Naphtali, 
with his melodious, persuasive tongue; Gad, strong of arm 
and swift of step, a desert king ! How Joseph’s forgiving soul 
9 


130 


JOSEPH. 


yearns to them, as they prostrate themselves before his royal 
seat. 

But he is not a madman, to accept them unquestioned and 
unknown ; if their spirits are lawless and cruel as in days of old, 
let them go back to kindred natures, descendants of Ishmael and 
Edom. 

But, lo, they speak to him with reverence, discretion and self- 
respect. When they are falsely accused, and cast into prison, he 
hears them, in self-reproach and humility, acknowledging the 
crying guilt of the past ; lamenting it as those who full often had 
bemoaned it in secret conference ; and recognizing, with submis- 
sive spirits, the punitive justice of the Lord. 

These words are a balm to Joseph’s heart; yet more is he 
consoled and encouraged by all that he learns of them, until that 
crowning hour, when he sees them as one man returned to share 
Benjamin’s fate. Instead of hating their younger brother, and 
striving to be rid of him, they plead his cause; and Judah, type 
of his Divine descendant, stands up as Benjamin’s surety, and 
offers to suffer in his room. Then is the cup of Joseph’s happi- 
ness full to the brim with sweetness unalloyed. 

Where, in any human history, can be found a parallel for that 
grand speech of Judah? 

In this narrative the portraiture of Judah gathers brightness 
with each successive touch. To his father he is forebearing, 
gentle, firm ; to Joseph courteous, true, logical, earnest, self-sacri- 
ficing ; he has risen to a heroic grandeur, worthy his lofty place 
in history. 

In this story, we have very many types of Christ in his work 
and character; Jacob, Reuben, Judah, Joseph, Benjamin, all 
serve in their turn. There was heavy guilt resting on the chil- 
dren of Jacob; it was purged away only by Jacob’s delivering 
up the beloved, only remaining son of his Rachel ; by Judah’s 


JOSEPH. 


131 


offering to suffer — the innocent for the guilty ; by Benjamin, the 
gracious, standing a reconciler between his offended and offending 
brothers. 

There are choice points where the student of this early world 
life loves to linger. Joseph has found the true root of peace, 
content, forgiveness, joy, every blissful emotion, when he has 
learned to see in each event of his life not the cruel, marring 
hand of man, but the wise, loving, guiding hand of God. In 
God all discords are lost, as in his home of perpetual peace. 

What must have been the tender flood of recollection sweeping 
over Joseph’s soul, when he handled that present sent by his 
unconscious father to a stranger son? Those choice fruits of 
Canaan ; connected with his childhood, his home, his beautiful 
mother : balm, honey, spices and myrrh, nuts and almonds : noble 
gifts of the heaven blessed soil of the land to be made forever 
sacred by the footsteps of the Son of God ! To the exile ruler in 
Egypt how they appeal, recalling the bliss and wonders of his 
youth, the glories of his native land. 

The influence obtained by the godly Joseph in Egypt is espe- 
cially seen in the welcome, for his sake, extended to his brethren, 
and the benefits heaped upon them. Thus for the sake of the 
Church, the world is blessed. 

Behold the scene when that gorgeous “ second chariot in the 
kingdom” is made ready to go and meet Jacob. Its gold and 
purple splendors flash under the sun ; before it run dark slaves ; 
the horses are caparisoned in silver and scarlet* and nodding 
plumes ; it is attended by a noble escort. So it goes up to Goshen, 
and there the long parted parent and son are re-united; and 
Joseph, in a passion of tenderness, “ fell on his father’s neck, and 
wept on his neck a good while.” 

As prime minister of the kingdom, Joseph is more and more 
acceptable; as in Potiphar’s house, everything prospers under 


132 


JOSEPH. 


his hand ; he accomplishes in the realm a bloodless revolution ; 
and becomes alike the saviour of monarch and people. 

It is Joseph who, after seventeen years of tender ministrations, 
closes his beloved father’s eyes. Israel’s dying is not, as once he 
said in his despair,- a going down into the shadow mourning ; 
but it is the setting forth for a higher life ; he is laying down 
infirmity and age, to be clothed with deathless vigor. 

“ Now purified at last, with hope revived, 

For life’s new goal he starts.” 

The glorious spirit of Prophecy irradiates his dying bed. 
Grand visions are, like Elijah’s fire chariot, to bear him upward. 
His blessings had “ prevailed above the blessings of his progeni- 
tors, unto the utmost bounds of the everlasting hills.” 

To the end of his life, Joseph was doubtless prime minister of 
Egypt, filling that lofty station for eighty years. In that time 
he had not forgotten Palestine, nor failed, Hebrew-like, to live in 
the promise of the future. He seals his godly trust, and his 
hope in the Coming One, by the oath he exacts from his descend- 
ants to carry up his bones when they return to the heritage of 
their fathers, the land of Israel’s possession. 

Until that grand Exodus, Joseph the Hebrew lay in state in 
the tomb of kings ; swathed in costly linen, wrapped up in price- 
less spices, his sarcophagus encrusted with gold, and painted with 
the impervious colors of the early orientals, slept the once slave 
boy. The burial was not too costly and honorable fot this expo- 
nent of godliness — this fair model for all men. 

“All the kings of the nations lie in glory, 

Cased in cedar and shut up in sacred gloom ! 

They reigned in their lifetime, with sceptre and diadem, 

But thou excellest them ; 

For life doth make thy grave her oratory, 

And the crown is still on thy brow ; 

All the kings of the nations lie in glory, 

And so dost thou.” 


VI. 

PHARAOH. 

EGYPT AGAINST HEAVEN. 


the period of time comprised between the fifth and 
twelfth chapters of Genesis, Moses, the Israelite, and 
Sethos II., the Egyptian, are described as pitted against 
each other in a desperate struggle. Moses stood the 
divinely appointed leader of the Church of the Lord; and thus 
God, and not Moses, was the real antagonist of Sethos, the 
unlimited despot of the greatest kingdom of the world. 

The strife was between Earth and Heaven — between the ser- 
vants of God, acting under his orders, and the highest civiliza- 
tion, the greatest wealth, and the chief military skill then existant. 

The extreme rationalistic view of Baron Bunsen is: “The 
Palestinians in Egypt struck a grand blow to avenge liberty — 
others of their race came from Syria to help them; and the day 
when they united forces,, was the great Sicilian Vespers in which 
Asia avenged herself on Africa.” 

The Chevalier, like Pharaoh, leaves God out of the record. In 
direct opposition to this human view, and liberty theory, is the 
Scriptural statement of the strife and its ulterior causes. Liberty 
was indeed avenged ; but only because it is good, and, like all 
good, is wrapped up in the furtherance of the Divine glory. 
“ I will send all my plagues on thine heart,” proclaims the Lord 

to Pharaoh ; “ and on thy servants ; and on thy people, that thou 

133 



134 


PHARAOH. 


mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth. For now 
will I stretch forth my hand, that I may smite thee, and thou 
shalt be cut off from the earth ; and in very deed for this cause 
have I raised thee up, to show in thee my power, and that my 
name may be declared through all the earth.” 

Pharaoh deliberately challenges Jehovah to the conflict. “ Who 
is the Lord, that I should obey his voice, or let Israel go ? I 
know not the Lord ; neither will I let Israel go.” 

Jehovah enters into the lists with braggart humanity, enters as 
Defender and Vindicator of his Church, to teach man in all time 
that “ his people shall dwell safely; their place of defence shall 
be the munitions of the rocks,” and whoso strives against them 
shall not prosper. Thus the Lord answers the boast of the 
Egyptian : “ Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh, for 
with a strong hand shall he let them go ; and with a strong hand 
shall he drive them out of his land.” 

Our first care in pursuing this theme will be to learn something 
of the royal splendor and power, the training and habit of 
thought, which moved this Pharaoh to assert his strength against 
the Almighty. 

Sethos II., the Pharaoh of the Exodus, was the grandson of 
Sesostris-Rameses, the Pharaoh “ who knew not Joseph,” i. e., 
who did not choose to recognize the compacts and conditions 
between the throne and the Israelites. 

This Sesostris-Rameses united all Egypt under his sceptre. 
Thebes was the centre of his power, and after a reign of forty-four 
years he bequeathed to his successor a united kingdom at the 
climax of its glory. 

Sethos II. found himself possessed of a kingdom reaching from 
the Delta to Syene, from Baal Zephon and Migdol to the Great 
Desert. Never a broad land in extent, but most magnificent in 
its resources; it was the world’s granary; it was filled with 


PHARAOH. 


135 


populous cities, and with vast momuments and art treasures ; it 
had horses and chariots; it was the grand depot for all the 
traders on earth ; it was rich and cultivated beyond all lands in 
the early history of the world ; and memorable as the abode of 
four millions of Hebrew slaves. This immense force of serfs was 
busy upon great buildings, the treasure cities, Pithom and 
Baineses. This work during the reign or regency preceding 
Sethos had moved slowly, but the newly enthroned tyrant pushed 
it with all his cruel pride and power. 

These Israelitish slaves were settled in Goshen, <( the land of 
flowers” — a region of country lying between Canaan and the 
Delta, a frontier province of Egypt. 

The land of Mizraim was “ the land of ancient kings.” The Egyp- 
tians belonged to the Hamitic race, a line which heired the cul- 
ture, the warlike spirit, and the genius for building, characteristic 
of the Cainites of the early-world period. The land was covered 
with stupendous monuments of human greatness, destined to be- 
come equally the monuments of the avenging wrath of heaven. 
Earliest and most magnificent of these monuments, standing 
lonely and peerless on the dim borderland of pre-historic life, is 
the great pyramid of Cheops. Around it settle the mists of ob- 
scurity ; from these it has loomed out in proportions, which, in 
strength, completeness and indestructibility, seem to hint for it 
some lofty origin. The waves of time, of doubt, and questioning 
and theorizing have dashed against its impassive feet, and rolled 
back broken. Before the wisdom locked in it, the world has stood 
waiting and groping these thousands of years. The age of con- 
summation shall discover the key, and shall learn the meaning of 

“The mystery hid 
Under Egypt’s pyramid.” 

Other pyramids there were, lesser copies of the first. There 
were also the obelisks, and the temples ; temples built for every 


136 


PHARAOH. 


city, and wildernesses of tombs ; “ there was not a wall, a plat- 
form, a pillar, an architrave, a frieze, or even a door-post in an 
Egyptian temple, that was not carved within and without,” 
says Lepsius. 

“ Egypt,” cries Bunsen, “ was the monumental land of the 
earth, and the Egyptians were the monumental people of history.” 

The southern limit of Egypt was Syene, a city of enormous 
extent, surmounted with a massive wall. The tower of Syene is 
called by the prophet, “ the pride of Egypt’s power.” And here 
we find ruins of cities which have grown and flourished and fallen 
on this ancient site, like successions of primeval, forests. In the 
vicinity of Syene were the red granite quarries, whence the mighty 
engineers and architects of Egypt cut obelisks and pillars, which 
should astonish all the generations to come. 

Moving towards the Delta, we find the city of Thebes. Says 
Nahum to Nineveh, “ Art thou better than populous No, that 
was situate among the rivers ? that had the waters about it, 
whose rampart was the sea, and her wall was from the sea?” 
Of all the desolate cities of antiquity, this is, in its destruction, 
the most stupendous ; no pen or pencil can compass the matchless 
grandeur of this sovereign city, even in her desolation. Here was 
the seat of the Pharaohs’ power, the stronghold, the jeweled throne, 
the glowing pavilion of that royal line who held themselves the 
climax of the ascending series of humanity ; who claimed that the 
Egyptians excelled all other men, and the king stood with all 
the Egyptians beneath his feet. Of Thebes, old Homer sings : 

“ The world’s great empress on the Egyptian plains ; 

That spreads her conquests o’er a thousand states, 

And pours her heroes through a hundred gates.” 

At Thebes was the temple of Kameses the Great, with the pil- 
lared Memnonium about it, built of black Nile brick, and stuc- 
coed. For their building the Egyptians used brick, porphyry, 


PHARAOH. 


137 


basalt, granite, sandstone and limestone, which, in the dry atmos- 
phere of the country, are nearly indestructible. 

Another gorgeous capital under Sethos, was Moph or Memphis, 
a city of fifteen or twenty miles in circumference. Here were the 
greatest and most ornate repositories of the dead ; here the under- 
ground galleries ; the cenotaphs of Apis ; the colossal statue of 
Rameses ; and, chief over all, the great pyramid. 

South a little is the Sphinx, whose stony lips yet hold the riddle 
the world has failed to solve, and who lies an awful sentinel guard- 
ing the solemn sanctuary above, yet keeping on its benignant 
features a genial promise of some good to come. Thebes is the 
vast necropolis of a vanished kingdom. 

Pharaoh also stretched his sceptre over On — Heliopolis — “ the- 
sacred city of the sun,” of Herodotus, the Bethshemesh of Jere- 
miah. Here one lone obelisk towers, to mark where the Libyan 
desert has buried kings and palaces in a common grave. When 
Abraham went into Egypt, this obelisk was pointing its lofty 
spire to the Heaven which was fading from the mind of the Egyp- 
tians like a morning dream. When Sethos reigned, at the feet 
of this monument were gathered towers and palaces and shrines ; 
artizans and traders, caravans and armies ebbed to and fro about 
it. All are gone, and the desert sand has for a thousand years 
been their sepulchre. 

Another choice jewel of the royal crown was Tahpanhes, called 
Daphne by the Greeks; here, in Jeremiah’s day, Israel was 
wooed to the worship of the sun and moon, and all the heavenly 
host. This city was on the Pelusiac arm of the Nile, where it 
could gather into its lap the treasures of land and sea. 

Sixteen miles from Daphne was Pelusium, “the strength of 
Egypt.” It was, in its day of glory, the key of the land; the 
bulwark of its frontier, a place of lofty importance, strongly forti- 
fied, noted for extent, wealth, and the vigilance and number of its 


138 


PHARAOH. 


garrison. Almost every historian of ancient times has a word in 
its praise. 

Thirty miles from Pelusium was Zoan “ in the field.” It was 
on the eastern branch of the Nile, in the midst of the richest 
alluvial plain in all the Delta. It was one of the royal cities ; and 
remains of temples, towers, columns, walls, obelisks, fortifications 
and statuary yet attest the lavish beauty of its prime: 

While Thebes was the capital of upper Egypt, Memphis was 
the royal city of the middle and lower kingdom. 

Between all these vast towns and those “ treasure cities,” 
Pithom and Rameses, were stretched chains of smaller towns, 
none without its temple and its rock tombs. Around all lay the 
fertile plains which Nile has redeemed from Saharah. These 
fields “ stood thick with corn.” The river-fertilized earth brought 
forth more than an abundance of wheat, barley, flax, millet, and 
all varieties of vegetables. Groves of date palms lifted their leafy 
crowns against the clear sky ; the beautiful lotus garlanded all the 
land ; the fig, date, grape, melon and pomegranate abounded ; the 
flocks and herds were scattered through the rich pastures. In the 
marshes of the Delta the papyrus flourished, giving its stalks for 
boats, and its delicate leaf for paper. The Nile and the lakes 
swarmed with fish ; purple pigeons wheeled in the air, swallows 
found their homes among the temples, the stately Ibis Religiosa 
and the stork loved Egypt for their home. Even the slaves could 
not complain of poverty, for the Israelites held great wealth in 
the province of Goshen, owning flocks and herds ; and when they 
reached the wilderness of Sin, they murmured after the flesh-pots 
of Egypt, saying, “ Would to God we had died in the land of 
Egypt, when we sat by the flesh-pots, and did eat bread to the 
full ; ” and again, “ We remember the fish which we did eat in 
Egypt freely, the cucumbers and melons, the leeks and the onions 
and the garlic .... who shall give us flesh to eat, for it was well 
with us in Egypt.” 


PHARAOH. 


139 


The country was also rich in building materials ; manufactures 
flourished, the pottery was famous, the fine linen was worth its 
weight in gold ; here the Israelitisli women learned the elegant 
weaving and embroidering “ in blue, purple, and scarlet and fine- 
twined linen, ” on which they labored for the tabernacle. Aaron’s 
making the calf at Horeb, and Moses’ destruction of it, are suffi- 
cient proof of Egyptian proficiency in the arts. 

With these hints of the affluence and strength of the kingdom 
as it came into the hands of Sethos, we turn to glance at his train- 
ing, and the habits of thought, which made him such a daring 
opponent of Heaven. 

The priests of Egypt were the tutors of the heir-apparent, who 
always belonged to their rank; they taught him in all their wis- 
dom ; but the beginning and end of every lesson was, that the 
people were created for the king ; that he was master and disposer 
of the souls and bodies of the common horde. He was instructed 
in cruelty as a fine art ; and was made to feel that his own desire 
was to be his ultimate law. 

Says Piazzi Smyth : “ Self-justification was a leading principle 
of the race. The power and right of an Egyptian sovereign, not 
merely to justify himself against men, but against God, was an 
essential part of their system. They wove this arrogant self- 
righteousness with other threads of bad religion and perverted 
morality, until it proved a veritable cart-rope for drawing the 
national ruin.” 

The ritual of the Egyptian “ Book of the Dead ” taught every 
Egyptian to stand up to confess his own holiness ; through seventy- 
four distinct enumerations, the worshipper cleared himself of every 
suspicion of every known and unknown sin. “ I have not done,” 
was his protestation in regard to all evil. “ Hence, the more re- 
ligious the Egyptians grew in their own fashion, the more they 
rebelled against the God of Heaven.” Therefore, the hour of 


140 


PHARAOH. 


tboir highest religious development must be the hour of their 
greatest antagonism to God, and of their consequent ruin ; while 
* the man, who was the supreme impersonation of the Egyptian 
idea, was the most truculent mutineer against the King of kings. 

Man in Egypt thus vindicating and justifying himself, became, 
in a measure, his own deity; but he also served a complete pan- 
theon of the most monstrous creations of his debased imagination, 
and loathsome beasts elevated to the shrine of divinity. 

Says Clemens Alexandrinus : “ The temples are surrounded 
with consecrated groves and pastures; their courts are infinite 
numbers of columns ; their walls glitter with foreign marbles and 
the richest paintings ; the shrine is resplendent with gold, silver 
and precious stones from India; the adytum is veiled with cloth 
of gold. But within is no god, but a cat or a crocodile, or some 
such brute — the Egyptian deity — a beast rolling himself in a 
crimson coverlet.” Such being the gods, such the moral and re- 
ligious ideas of the Egyptians — “ for a while this Pagod Figure 
grew arid flourished mightily on earth ; but, in the hour of its 
greatest apparent strength, it was touched by a more than mortal 
hqnd, and calamitous ruin then supervened and has never yet 
ceased.” 

This ruin came in the reign of Sethos II., in the direful hour 
when he matched himself against the Highest, and was blasted 
by the breath of his Adversary, before whom the sons of earth 
are as the small dust in the balance. 

Sethos II. ascended the throne a graceless profligate; no 
sooner did he grasp the reins of government, than the groans of 
the oppressed rose to heaven, appealing for vengeance. 

Says Osburn : “ In spite of the loving care lavished on him by 
his Regent-aunt, and the ‘ special books written for his sole use 
and behoof, containing all the good deeds of his ancestors/ he 
turned out an exceedingly bad and abandoned character.” 


PHARAOH. 


141 


Sethos found himself a being raised above all law ; his courtiers 
and soldiers were mere puppets in his hands, avenging angels on 
all his foes. No one addressed him save with “ O King Sethos, 
living forever ! ” as both exordium and peroration for their speech. 
Wherever he turned his eyes, on temple, tomb, palace and monu- 
ment, he saw the debasing records of his religion in the grotesque 
animal-headed gods ; for, as says Renan : “ Egypt had been in- 
vaded by a whole pantheon, numerous, and accompanied by fictions 
horrible, and at the same time the most silly that the human brain 
ever conceived.” 

According to the same authority, Sethos was the son of a race 
who were mentally on a uniform dull level, “ where never appeared 
a great warrior, a great philosopher, a great poet, a great artist, 
nay, not even a great minister; for Joseph, who wrought such 
wonderful changes, was not a native.” 

While this tyrant, dull of brain, cruel of heart, and strong of 
hand, was in the full flush of his power, there appeared before 
him a man of* the Israelites, long an exile in the land of Midian, 
once his rival to the throne, a man indeed who had refused this 
throne, and who had been predicted by the astrologers as one who 
should build up Israel on the ruins of Egypt. 

Sethos had hoped this man was dead, had believed that he had 
perished in the wilderness ; but now, at eighty years of age, he 
stood before him, vigorous and ardent like one endowed with 
immortal youth. Beside him was his brother, another grand 
model of humanity; and they came vested with supernatural 
powers ; “ Surely,” had God said, “ I will be with thee.” 

The king of Egypt had never received a command from any ; 
it was to him a new experience, when these two Hebrews stood 
before him, and in authoritative tones addressed him : “ The Lord 
God of Israel saith, Israel is my son, even my first-born : and I 
say unto thee, Let my son go that he may serve me, and if thou 


142 


PHARAOH. 


refuse to let him go I will slay thy son, even thy first-born. 
Thus saith the Lord ; let my people go, that they may hold a 
feast to me in the wilderness.” 

Wrath blackened the monarch’s countenance ; his eyes flashed 
baleful fires ; he would now have had these men slain in his sight, 
or, as show the many paintings, have struck off their heads with 
his own royal sword ; but some power, which he could neither 
resist nor comprehend, held him back. He replied, in high indig- 
nation, “ Who is the Lord ? I know not the Lord ; neither will 
I let Israel go.” 

The Hebrew brothers were fain to argue the case, and thus pre- 
sented a singular spectacle in the Egyptian court. 

The sovereign vented his malice on the multitude of Hebrew 
serfs ; doubling their burdens ; berating and beating them, until 
“ for anguish of spirit and for cruel bondage,” their hearts died 
within them; and they hearkened not to the encouragements of 
their heaven-sent deliverer. 

The grand battle now commenced ; from first to last it was an 
ascending series of judgments, directed against the idolatrous king 
and people, through the very gods they worshipped. 

Wm. Osburn criticises these plagues most minutely, showing 
that each of the first nine were “ particular intensifications of 
natural features of country or climate, as if the Almighty especially 
intended to show ” that the gods of the nations are vanity, and to 
prove to the Egyptians the inefficiency of the divinities which 
they had set up over the elements, and over the animal and vege- 
table kingdoms. 

We are apt, in reading this account of the plagues in Scripture, 
to imagine them compressed into a few weeks ; but in fact, as 
Osburn carefully shows, they were extended through very nearly 
a year. And this not only gave the immense host of the Israelites 
time to complete their preparations for their departure, but it 


PHARAOH. 


143 


marked the deliberation and determination of the Divine mind, 
giving each plague time fully to impress itself on the Egyptian 
heart, and to warn them of the consequences of rebellion ; permit- 
ting the better-inclined part of the people time to repent, fear God 
and save themselves and their property from that untoward gene- 
ration, that the whole nation perish not. To this cause we may 
assign the preservation of any part of the Egyptian wealth and the 
conservation of the empire; so that, though broken and forever 
weakened, it yet existed, a lasting memorial of the power of Al- 
mighty God, and of the utter futility of human opposition to the 
Divine will. As we shall see, in tracing these plagues, some part 
of the Egyptians were warned, and by obedience and humility, 
preserved a portion of their flocks and herds ; while even the magi- 
cians and courtiers were forced to admit that here was “ the finger 
of God,” and to plead with their monarch to submit himself to one 
stronger than the sons of men and the gods of the heathen. 

The whole country of Egypt is a Donum Nili ; as the river has 
shrunken, and as the hand of the Lord, according to his prophecy, 
ha$ “ made the rivers dry,” and has been against Egypt and her 
rivers, and the streams of outlet in the Delta have diminished, 
Egypt has become a “ hissing and a desolation.” 

The Egyptians worshipped as a god the river which had given 
them their country, and upon whose overflowings their food and 
wealth depended. The river was a sacred mystery ; high up as 
they could trace it, it flowed the same ; its sources were hidden in 
the storied realms of equatorial Africa. If Nilus, in displeasure, 
withheld his life-giving floods, the land grew black with starva- 
tion ; if in wrath the god-river swelled beyond benign limitations, 
the inundation swept homes and villages and crops away, and 
shrieks of terror and despair re-echoed on his borders. 

No wonder, then, that among an idolatrous people such a river 
was worshipped. 


144 


PHARAOH. 


Now, in the very season when this stream is most clear, the 
outstretched rod of Moses brought upon it the first plague — the 
plague of blood. Not only this, but all the fish in the river — 
those fish on which the people largely depended for food, and 
probably also those crocodile-gods, before which they bowed the 
knee, perished in the singular visitation. Not only was the 
country distressed and impoverished, in a very great degree, by 
this plague, but it was also deeply humiliated ; because in it, its 
gods were put under the feet of Moses. The plague began in- 
stantaneously “ in the sight of Pharaoh, and in the sight of his 
servants,” at the moment when the king and his court went 
early in the morning to bathe and worship, at the sacred stream,. 

Seven days this plague lasted, and was then removed. 

Smith , in his Bible Dictionary, appears to indicate that the 
second plague followed immediately on the first; but there. w r as 
doubtless a respite ; not only as the Lord warns before he strikes, 
but it is far from him to destroy the righteous with the wicked ; 
and he permitted the more thoughtful of the people time to con- 
sider their ways, and renounce, if they would, the ungodly prac- 
tices of their king. 

As the history moves on, we see this leaven of fear and 
repentance working in the nation. 

Again came the word to Moses, after an interval, and with 
Aaron, his mouthpiece, he returned to the presence of the irate 
king. 

His message of command and warning was unheeded. Pharaoh 
was of the line of priest-kings, and the religion of Egypt was 
wrapped up in his sovereignty. The jealous priests saw in the 
success of Moses the downfall of their own domination ; and in 
their different grades of magicians, astrologers and temple priests, 
they gathered about the monarch to strengthen his heaven-daring 
resolution and pride ; to beguile him with their enchantments, 


PHARAOH. 


145 


and to confirm him in a belief that the gods of Egypt could equal 
Jehovah in the strife. 

Among these divinities was Hekt, the frog-headed goddess. 
The frog abounded in Egypt, and being sacred, must needs Ikj 
unmolested ; one comfort had always been, that these loathsome 
reptiles kept in the damp places about the streams, and the 
people were able to be out of their way. 

When “ The potent rod of Am ram’s son ” waved over the Nile, 
out of it came up countless hosts of frogs, which, like an invading 
army, took possession of the whole land. Forsaking their natural 
instincts, they swarmed even in the driest places ; disputed posses- 
sion of beds, cooking utensils, ovens and kneading troughs, the 
frogs suddenly became inhabitants of the houses, ousting the right- 
ful owners; but these hapless wretches found themselves no 
better off when they had resigned their abodes in favor of their 
disgusting gods, for they were overrun with the troops of them in 
the streets; and Pharaoh himself found his couch, his throne, 
his robes of state, and his royal dishes, infested with his hopping 
deities. Never was there such an opportunity for the study of 
Batrachia ! 

The piety of Pharaoh was not proof against such an intimacy 
with his gods. 

He yielded a little ; he sent for the Hebrew brothers and said : 
“ Entreat for me, that the Lord may remove the frogs, and I will 
let Israel go.” 

Moses, with the greatest courtesy, asked when this should be. 
The wary monarch set the next day; he did this as secretly 
hoping the frogs would before that take themselves off; yet 
assured that if they did not, twenty-four hours longer of their 
presence would be the extreme limit of his endurance. Moreover, 
he wished to try the power of Moses, by giving him a set time in 

which to work. 

10 


146 


PHARAOH. 


Kespite came : sudden death smote; the frog-gods, and their 
worshippers gathered their putrid bodies into heaps. The land 
was emptied of the plague, but all the foetid air kept it in remem- 
brance. 

Finding himself thus relieved, the king gracefully forgot his 
pledge; the Lord waited for a time to make it evident that 
Pharaoh intended to break his promise, and that the odium of 
the next plague should rest on its regal provocative. 

Suddenly, while Pharaoh congratulated himself on getting his 
own way, the rod of Aaron was stretched forth, and smote all the 
dust of Egypt into a horrible, crawling life. 

“This plague,” says Smith, in his Bible Dictionary, “does not 
seem especially directed against the superstitions of Egypt.” 

Let us consider this point. Chief goddess of Egypt was Isis, 
wife of Osiris ; similar to Scandinavian Bertha, and Ephesian 
Diana, the universal mother. “Isis,” says Anthon, “was the 
earth, or sublunary nature in general ; to them the soil of Egypt in 
particular” Now this, their great goddess, became transformed 
to the foul vermin which devoured her children. She had been 
the fond mother whose bountiful breasts fed their veins, and 
whose beauty was their pride. They called her Lady, Mis- 
tress, Mother, Nurse ; yet now she had died doubly, and become 
corrupt, and loathsome plagues crept on them from her corpse. 

Until this time the Egyptian magicians had been able, either in 
fact or in seeming, to keep pace with Moses in his miracles, in so 
far as producing the plagues went; though they had been utterly 
helpless about removing them: in this act the power of the 
prophet shining forth supreme. In the third plague the magi- 
cians, whom the Egyptians looked upon as filled with the spirit 
of their divinities, found themselves unable to contend with the 
Hebrew brothers, and said to Pharaoh : “ This is the finger of 
God.” Not of Apis, Osiris, or any other of the Egyptian 


PHARAOH. 


147 


Pantheon, but of some superior Deity such as the Greeks con- 
fessed — “ The Unknown God.” Thus ignorantly have the 
heathen ever been compelled by the voice within them, to own a 
Lord above their own lords. 

J osephus says that there was found no wash or ointment to 
stay the ravages of the third plague; and that from it many of the 
Egyptians miserably perished. 

The third plague accomplished its mission : the people of Egypt 
had begun to fear and tremble, and to desire the departure of the 
Israelites. Pharaoh and his nobles were yet resolved to hold 
fast that multitude of slaves, which were building up Egypt from 
one end to the other. “And the heart of Pharaoh was hardened.” 
A terrible resumd of this king’s life, and not alone of him can 
it be written ; how many have their hearts hardened in a long 
course of iniquity and chastisement? Not always 
“ Sweet are the uses of adversity.” 

Each morning Sethos and his court went down to the river to 
bathe and to worship. Full often as the despot turned to the 
green swelling bank of the stream, he was met by that man of 
majestic beauty, stern as an avenging angel — the man who had 
outlived fear, Moses the Prophet, denouncing the vengeance of 
the skies upon the land of Mizraim. 

Thus as a prelude to the fourth plague came these sons of Levi, 
with the often repeated mandate : “ Let my people go : else, will I 
send swarms (ar6b) upon thee . . . and all the houses of the Egyp- 
tians shall be full . . . and the ground whereon they are. And I 
will sever in that day the land of Goshen, where my people 
dwell ... to the end that thou mayest know that I am the Lord in 
the midst of the earth. And I will put a division between thy 
people and my people.” 

Josephus indicates that these “ swarms ” were all manner of 
known and hitherto unheard of beasts, which invaded the land, 


148 


PHARAOH. 


“ by whose means men perished ; and the land became destitute 
of husbandmen/’ Others have considered these swarms to be of 
the common house-fly, which are ever singularly plentiful in 
Egypt, and a terrible infliction. Oedmann advanced the opinion, 
supported by Dr. Hawkes and many others, that the Blatta orientalis t 
or Egyptian beetle, is indicated by drob , and in this case we see 
the people again chastized through one of their own idols, for the 
beetle was sacred. 

Sethos had stubbornly endured the lice, but the clouds of Scara- 
bsei conquered him. He reluctantly sent for Moses, and proposed 
that if worship was his object, the Hebrews should hold a grand 
religious festival for the propitiation of their God, in Goshen. 

The ambassador of Heaven would not abate one jot of his de- 
mands. He replied with the utmost calmness : “ It is not meet so 
to do ; for we should sacrifice the abomination of theEgyptians . . . 
lq, will they not stone us ? ” 

The ordained sacrifices of Israel were lambs, cattle, goats, 
and doves. These would be the abomination of the Egyptians in 
various ways. 

The cow, the sheep, the goat, and the bull apis were especially 
sacred to the Egyptians. Some of these animals were worshipped 
as gods in themselves, others as the symbols of divinity. 

The superstitions of this people w^ere most deeply rooted. Di- 
odorus tells us that when the humbled people were most anxious 
to propitiate the Romans, all their fear of the dominant nation 
could not prevent the destruction of a Roman soldier, who had 
thoughtlessly killed a cat. Whoever laid violent hands on a 
sacred animal was doomed to death. So great was the reverence 
for their holy beasts, that their bodies were embalmed. The cat, 
now starved, beaten, hunted, killed and flung out upon the high- 
way, has had in its history a golden age, when its tastes were 
gratified; when it dwelt in kings’ palaces; was nourished and 


PHARAOH. 


149 


respected, and found a burial superior to that of half its human 
servitors ! 

The word “ abomination ” refers not to the view taken of the 
animal itself, but of the act of its slaughter. Oxen might some- 
times be offered, as the loftiest act of worship ; but it must be a 
perfectly red ox, one single black hair rendering it unfit for sacri- 
fice. Cows were consecrated to Athor, and could never be slain. 

The exception taken by Moses to the king’s proposition was 
so just, that even Pharaoh gave it heed, saying: “I will let you 
go . . . only go not very far away.” 

He meant to have them where they could be environed by the 
royal armies, and driven back to servitude. 

“ Entreat for me,” cried Sethos. 

“ I will entreat that the swarms may depart to-morrow,” re- 
plied Moses. 

At this promise, a gleam of exultation lit the face of the regal 
liar, and the prophet read it well ; he knew that the king meant 
to play false. Therefore he turned and said, in mingled warning 
and scorn : “ Let not Pharaoh deal deceitfully.” The Egyptian 
standard of morality was not very high, and the sovereign was 
little abashed at this reproof. 

He coolly carried out his intention ; and being rescued from 
trouble, refused to fulfil his pledge. Egypt has ever been an 
unchi valrous land, lost to all idea of honor. 

Each plague was ordained to be more severe than the one pre- 
ceding' it. The fifth visitation was the murrain , which fell very 
heavily in two ways. Death reigned among both the sacred and 
the useful animals. The enumeration here is very valuable : cattle, 
horses, asses, camels, oxen, sheep. 

It was long objected, by the despisers of the Bible, that this 
record was at fault ; that Egypt had no camels, as there were none 
pictured on the monuments . We cannot understand the claim 


150 


PHARAOH. 


that the pictures of Egypt must contain the whole circle of Egyp- 
tian zoology ; but, even admitting it, it does not militate against 
Scripture, for the camel is seyeral times repeated in pairs of heads 
and necks on the obelisk at Luxor. 

Taking the brutes enumerated as the especial victims of the fifth 
plague, we have, first, those sacred : cattle (kine), oxen and sheep. 
We have then the most useful animals : horses, asses, camels, their 
beasts of war and burden. 

Egypt was ever famous for horses and chariots ; the horse was 
extensively used in all the land, and its loss would be a crowning 
calamity. The ass and the camel were chief beasts of burden ; 
and the ox, besides being sacred, was widely used in drawing up 
the river water for purposes of irrigation. 

The Egyptians were an agricultural people, and we can under- 
stand the wide ruin occasioned by the destruction of their domestic 
animals ; while, as in the other plagues, they suffered in their re- 
ligious idea. 

To prove the truth of Moses* declaration, that a division should 
be made between his own people and the Hebrews, the king sent 
into Goshen to see how it fared with the dwellers there. “ Of the 
cattle of the children of Israel, died not one.** 

The effect was only yet further to harden his adamantine 
heart. 

The sixth plague was accomplished, not by the sign of the rod, 
but by sprinkling toward heaven the ashes of that furnace, wherein 
the bondsmen toiled. The act was one of deep significance. God 
had covenanted with Abraham, that he would bring his seed out 
of the strange land, after four hundred years ; judging the cruel 
nation, and bringing forth the captives with great substance. At 
this time, Abraham had seen a u smoking furnace, and a burning 
lamp.** Egypt was the furnace of affliction wherein the Lord 
would try Israel ; from that furnace had their God promised to 


PHARAOH. 


151 


bring them forth, and this sign was to remind Him of his cove- 
nant, and that the time had come. 

The important feature in this plague of boils was, that it 
touched the sacred persons of the scrupulously clean priests and 
magicians. Manetho calls the Hebrews a “ nation of lepers;” 
he strives to make it appear that the Egyptians drove out Israel, 
because of their uncleanness ; and calls their departure the leper 
exodus . We see in this the falsehood of a prejudiced enemy, 
making history the vehicle of his slanders ; nor is it only in an- 
cient times that history has been made more false than fable ! 
Apion roused the wrath of Flavius Josephus, by stories of a 
national taint and a u leper exodus,” as we see in <( Josephus 
against Apion.” 

This sixth plague brought a form of leprosy on the priest-caste 
(of which was the king), and on all the holy magicians, shaking 
the faith of the people in their power and purity ; and showing 
them unable to contend with the God of the Hebrews. 

Still the heart of Pharaoh grew harder ; and now again, “ early 
in the morning,” Moses appeared like a wraith on the track of 
the king. The sun rose bright over Nilus, and the sacred droves 
went to the god-river to drink. Impotent were all these divini- 
ties of Egypt ! Moses lifted up his cry : “ Thus saith the Lord 
God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, that they may serve me. 
Now will I send all my plagues on thee . . . Thou shalt be cut off. . . 
For this cause I have raised thee up ... . To-morrow will I send a 
grievous hail, such as hath not been from the foundation of Egypt 
until now.” 

The haughty king set his face as brass against this declaration. 
Moses- then turned from him to warn the deputies, magistrates 
and officers who stood by. As Goshen was spared for Israel’s 
sake, now all who feared God among the Egyptians, all who had 
been turned from their evil ways by the exhibition of Almighty 


152 


PHARAOH. 


power, should have an opportunity to save their property from 
the impending judgment. 

This visitation had a remarkable effect on Sethos. 

The skies of Egypt are cloudless and stormless. The tempest 
which followed the uplifting of Moses’ rod, was not merely a storm 
such as for intensity would have been appalling anywhere in the 
tropics, but was in Egypt unnatural and unprecedented ; no land 
on earth would have been so smitten with consternation at such 
meteorological displays, as the valley of the Nile. Egypt wor- 
shipped the heavenly constellations, and looked to the planets for 
favoring breezes, and fair weather ; her gods deserted her. Thun- 
der pealed through the sky, rending the heavens, and shaking 
the earth. The hail rattled down furiously, killing man and 
beast ; cutting off leaf and herbage, while the roused winds snapped 
the stems of the palm trees, mowed down orange, pomegranate 
and fig, and scathed the vines. More than this, wild lightnings 
leaped from the clouds, and, instead of passing with a swift flash, 
seized on grass blade and grain stock, on melon and cucumber 
vines, as their food, and ran in ominous flames along the ground. 
All the splendors and terrors of “ heaven’s dread artillery ” were 
let loose on Egypt. Men, women and children wept, shrieked 
and trembled. Pharaoh quaked in his palace ; he sent in haste 
for Moses and Aaron. Heaven preserved his messenger; and, 
unmoved amid all the awful wonders of the tornado, the sons of 
Amram came before the royal throne. New and strange confes- 
sion for an Egyptian king, Pharaoh cries : “ I have sinned, this 
time.” It was not penitent confession, but merely an admission 
of folly : he had erred in matching himself against an adversary 
too strong for him ; and must now cry for quarter. But even so 
he would renew the strife, and take advantage of a truce to strike 
some unexpected blow. He was a complete coward, and would 
stoop never so far to gain relief. He sees he must concede yet 


PHARAOH. 


153 


more, and he says to Moses : “ The Lord is righteous, and I and 
my people are wicked.” But he has no intention of being any 
better. He will try his Machiavellian game yet the third time ; 
“ Entreat the Lord, for it is enough, and I will let you go ; and 
ye shall stay no longer.” 

“ The goodness and severity of God ” shall be displayed by re- 
moving the plague ; but Moses knows full well what the effect 
will be. Fixing his piercing eye on the shivering catiff before him, 
he says : “ I will spread forth my hands and the thunder shall 
cease, that thou mayest know that there is a God. But as for thee 
and thy servants, I know that ye will not yet fear the Lord.” 

And the event justified his assertion ; for when this seventh 
plague was stilled, there was no permitting the bound to go free. 

The eighth plague came, after some little interval ; and was 
preceded by a warning, giving king and people twenty-four hours 
in which to avert it, by obedience to the command: “Let my 
people go.” 

The besotted monarch preferred to brave the coming judgment; 
but his courtiers and advisers pressed about him, demanding 
angrily : “ How long shall this man be a snare unto us ? Let the 
men go, that they may serve the Lord their god. Knowest thou 
not yet that Egypt is destroyed f ” 

They had been warned of locusts ; and no visitation is more 
dreaded in the east. At different times Egypt had suffered, in a 
measure ; and if they came, fierce and numerous, increased to a 
miraculous multitude and voracity, how should anything in Egypt 
stand before them ? 

Says Denon : “ The locusts make the land bald. They devour 
every green thing ; we looked on them, and all the plain seemed to 
move, or to be covered with a dark, sluggishly rolling stream.” 

By this time, the nature of the contest between the king of 
Egypt and the King of Heaven Avas obvious to all. Hebrews and 


154 


PHAKAOH. 


Egyptmns stood looking on, waiting for the result ; the labors of 
the bondsmen had ceased; preparations for their going fortli 
hastened among them ; and they anxiously turned to each new 
plague as the signal of deliverance. 

Faltering a little in his stubborn resolution, before the angry 
representations of his subjects, Pharaoh called for Moses and 
Aaron, and proposed a second compromise : The adult males 
might go ; the children and their mothers were to be left behind, 
as hostages for the speedy return of the valued slaves. 

When Moses had rejected this half-concession, he was driven 
from the royal presence with contumely. 

Only when the land was naked of vegetation ; when the swarms 
of this miraculous cloud of locusts blackened the face of the 
heavens ; when there remained not any green thing in the trees 
nor herb in the field through all the land of Egypt, did Pharaoh 
fear famine, and perhaps revolt in his dominions, and too late, 
sent in hot haste for the Prophets. 

Again barren promises, and heartless confessions; and again 
that hardening of the heart. 

The ninth plague breaks upon Egypt without warning. The 
people worshipped the setting sun ; from the far plain of Shinar 
they had brought this portion of the Chaldaic faith. They poured 
out, also, incense to the queen of heaven. The sun and the moon 
were objects of profoundest adoration. But now, lo, these their 
gods seemed blotted out from their orbits. A new night fell on 
the land ; a night without a star ; when morning forgot to return ; 
when the brooding blackness was like the face of chaos before 
God spoke light into being. “ There was darkness in all the land 
of Egypt, even darkness that might be felt.” Three days, stupe- 
fied with the new horror, sat king, priests and people. They 
made no note of time ; the long anguish seemed years of solemn 
desolation, when no man saw his neighbor ; when the babe could 


PHARAOH. 


155 


not find consolation in the face of its mother, when none rose from 
his place ; food, sleep, hope, comfort, all were gone, commited to 
that black burial. The land where Death was soon to reap his 
greatest harvest, was clad in a premonitory pall. 

After the record of this long, long, terrible night, comes the 
shining sentence : “ And all the children of Israel had light in 
their dwellings.” 

When God wars with the wicked, his people sit in peace in the 
beauty of his presence. 

When the day of vengeance is in his heart, and the year of his 
redeemed has come, they are called to shelter : 

“ Come, children, to your Father’s arms, 

Hide in the chambers of my grace : 

Till the fierce storms be overblown, 

And my revenging fury cease. 

My sword shall boast its thousands slain, 

And drink the blood of mighty- kings, 

While heavenly peace around my flock 
Stretches its soft and shady wings.” 

Darkness terrified Pharaoh to a little further yielding. He called 
Moses, and consented to the departure of the nation, provided the 
property were left behind. 

“ There shall not a hoof be left behind,” retorted the resolute 
leader of the people. 

All the hatred of Pharaoh’s heart broke forth. He shouted : 
“ Get thee from me ! In the day thou seest my face, thou 
shalt die!” 

We may here pause to consider that Pharaoh had not dared to 
put Moses to death, because only through his intercession could 
plagues be withdrawn. It was this salutary fear, also, which pre- 
vented the impoverished Egyptians seizing the flocks, herds and 
beasts of burden belonging to the Hebrews, to make up for their 
own losses. 


156 


PHARAOH. 


Moses did, however, enter the presence of the king once more, 
with his last and most tremendous threat, and then the Prophet 
and not the king was enraged, and Moses “went out from 
Pharaoh in great anger.” 

The last blow was to be struck. The passover, type of the won- 
derful passion of our Lord Christ, was instituted. All through 
the land of Goshen, there was, on door-post and lintel, a sanguine 
stain, emblem of the atoning blood ; and by this, all Israel should 
be saved. 

The exhausted land of Egypt lay in midnight sleep ; some of 
the impoverished people yet, for a few brief hours, forgot their 
care and fear ; others waked and watched ; for the rumor of that 
heavy prophecy of him who had never threatened in vain, had 
gone abroad. 

Sethos in his palace hugged his pride ; he despised the threat. 
Life and death were in the keeping of the immortal gods, not in 
this Hebrew’s hand. Like unbelievers of the present day, Pha- 
raoh sought to attribute the nine great plagues to natural causes, 
and to sever them from any interference of the Lord. 

At the very beginning of this conflict, God had said : “ I will 
slay thy son, even thy first-born.” 

In the execution of this most terrible judgment, God thrust 
forth his own arm from behind the veil of nature, and her laws, 
and himself struck the fatal blow. 

That angel whom the Lord, centuries later, commissioned as 
the messenger of his wrath on Israel ; whom David saw standing 
between heaven and earth with a drawn sword in his hand 
stretched out over Jerusalem, went abroad in all the kingdom 
of Mizraim. When the Divine Babe fled from Herod’s rage, 
all the Bethlehemite mothers wept for their children; and 
Israel fled from Pharaoh amid the lamentations for the first- 
born. 


PHARAOH. 


157 


“At midnight the Lord smote the first-born in the land of 
Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh that sat on his throne, to 
the first-born of the captive that was in the dungeon, and all the 
first-born of cattle. And there was a great cry in Egypt ; for 
there was not a house where there was not one dead.” 

Now was the pride of Sethos broken into pieces beneath the 
feet of his Adversary. In that extreme hour he drove forth his 
slaves, and they, in going, demanded and received the reward of 
years of servitude. 

At this time Israel numbered probably four millions. Although 
for so long they had been preparing for a remove, we can only 
account for their speedy and entire exodus by a special interven- 
tion of Providence. As says Wm. Osburn : “This departure of 
the Hebrews would be impossible in our day; but we must 
remember, it was a continuation of the several great immigrations 
of the human race, which had been directed and assisted by the 
finger of God.” 

Once more Egypt lifted her head to renew the combat with 
heaven. On the third day, king and people realizing that they 
had lost slaves and wealth, and burning for vengeance, determined 
to pursue the Hebrews. 

Pharaoh himself headed the attacking host : he was followed 
by “six hundred chosen chariots;” horsemen, captains, and 
foot soldiers, and went in haste to carry on his war with 
God, with earthly weapons. Eusebius , quoting from Manetho, 
says that “this great army was accompanied by the sacred 
animals.” 

“ In these Mosaic times,” says Hereen, “ the warrior caste first 
appeared in Egypt.” And Herodotus states that the towns in the 
Delta were well garrisoned, and names the sixteen and a half 
nomes, or provinces, in that region, where the standing army of 
Egypt was stationed. Thus in haste a host could be summoned 


158 


PHARAOH. 


and set forth. They followed Moses and the Israelites blindly 
and madly, even into the very midst of that wonderful way 
which God had opened for them in the midst of the waters. 

“ The Palestinians,” says Bunsen — and it is a grand admission 
from him — “were messengers of the Lord. The courage and 
judgment of the Egyptians failed before the moral faith of the 
Prophet of God. An army despatched to attack the departing 
multitudes perished in the waves.” 

A heathen would not write in favor of Christian truth; but 
Diodorus Siculus states that he had collected from the traditions 
of nations near the Bed Sear, “ that once its waters retired and left 
the bottom dry, then returned with grea*t fury.” 

The Egyptian chronologer writes : “ It is said, that fire flashed 
on the Egyptians from in front, and destroyed them.” 

Moses himself records that at this final point in the strife 
between Egypt and heaven, “ In the morning watch the Lord 
looked on the hosts of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire 
and cloud, and troubled the host of the Egyptians ; and took off 
their chariot-wheels. And they said, Let us flee from the face 
of Israel, for the Lord fighteth for Israel. And the Lord over- 
threw the Egyptians in the midst of the sea. And the waters 
returned, and covered chariot and horsemen ; and there remained 
not so much as one of them . . . And Israel saw the Egyptians dead 
upon the shore.” 

“ Egypt was humbled as never before,” says Bunsen, who 
explains the tenth plague thus : “ The Palestinians swooped down 
on Egypt, and slew all the first-born , even to the king’s* son in 
the palace, and from this blow the land never recovered.” 

Here the Chevalier stultifies himself, for how could an invading 
horde know how to select the first-born ; or wish to confine 
slaughter to them ? The erring king would have been slain be- 
fore his son, had men been dealing with Egypt. But God’s ways 


PHARAOH. 


159 


are not as our ways, and He had beaten his defiers small as the 
chaff on the threshing floor. Flocks, herds, grain, fruits, sacred 
animals, chariots, horses, army, first-born, king — all were gone; 
the rebellious land was left wasted and bare. 

Here this tremendous battle, this long warfare of Egypt against 
Heaven ended ; and as it closed amid prodigies of nature, and a 
terrible harvest of death, we pause to consider the character of 
this most daring of mortals, who openly and deliberately entered 
the lists of combat with the skies. Pharaoh was the product of a 
godless culture. Egypt, like that glittering Pandemonium which 
fallen spirits built in hell, towered high, made broad her shining 
battlements, and multiplied her palaces, but in every stamped 
brick, in every sculptured frieze and painted wall, defied the One 
True God. Pharaoh was the very acme and exponent of Egyp- 
tian cultivation ; he had absolute and perfect confidence in him- 
self ; he put the world under his feet, and claimed parity with 
Heaven. A creature of unfaltering cruelty and boundless pride, 
loving himself only, seeking his own gratification as the one object 
of his existence, he was placed where he could give free rein to 
every inordinate passion. Men he treated as his toys ; he moved 
them like puppets at his will ; he had no one on earth to curtail 
or oppose his power, and the perversity of his fallen nature 
rejoiced in finding One with whom to contend. 

In his mad phrenzy he still fought on, when he was in each 
encounter stripped of something wherein he had exulted; his 
wealth, the prestige of his sacred caste, the heir of his throne, 
were taken from him: stripped of all his jewels, suddenly, in 
the chill, gray dawn, he found himself amid the boiling sea, 
tossed, struggling and gasping on the wave ; and then the waters 
washed the dead body of Pharaoh to the feet of Moses. On that 
supreme night history was born, and Egypt died. 


VII. 


MOSES. 

FAITH IN ACTION. 


HE heroes of Faith are the true heroes of the world ; yet 
more, they are the heroes of the immortal life. 

They may be broadly divided into two classes : the men 
of patient endurance, and of vigorous action. Of these 
last have ever been the long line of the Reformers, whom God 
has commissioned to arouse and purify his Church, and lead it on 
to a higher destiny. They are men Divinely moulded to their 
time, fitted singularly to the exigencies which have demanded them. 

Great type of these was Moses, Israel’s God-sent “ ruler and 
deliverer;” Moses, the law-giver; who left his impress not on 
the Jewish polity alone, but on the world. His exploits and his 
judicial enactments have changed the face of all succeeding time. 

The family of Jacob was doomed to a long bondage in Egypt. 
Thus for a while the blessing of Noah was reversed, and Shem, 
in whose tents his brethren were to dwell protected, became a 
servant to Ham. 

Says Piazzi Smyth (Royal Astronomer of Scotland): a The 
Egyptians undoubtedly fled from before a judgment in the land 
of Shinar ; but arrived on the banks of the Nile, unrepentant and 
unsubdued.” 

When the Lord scattered the nations abroad on the face of the 

whole earth, flying before Omnipotent wrath, Mizraim, the second 
160 



MOSES. 


1G1 


mentioned of the sons of Ham, carried the standards of his host 
across the desert to the valley of Egypt ; while Canaan, his brother, 
spread himself over the land which thereafter bore his name. 

Among these the knowledge of the true God was doubtless long 
preserved; their worship becoming corrupted by degrees. We 
know that Abraham was met by Melchizedek, a descendant of 
Canaan, and priest of the Most High God. 

In Egypt Abraham found the Great Pyramid of Cheops com- 
pleted ; and the Egyptian tradition has always been, that this 
Cheops, or Shofo, was no respecter of the gods of Egypt ; and that, 
therefore , his remains were desecrated in later years by the priests. 

Thus not only do we find Shofo an anti-idolatrous sovereign, 
setting up on the borders of his kingdom that mighty mystery of 
the centuries ; but, singularly enough, we find that in his labor 
he was helped by one Philitis, a shepherd king, who fed his flocks 
in that locality. 

So great a share in this work did Philitis have, that one tradi- 
tion runs that he, instead of Shofo, was the builder of the 
Pyramid. 

Over this Philitis, the students of Ancient History have lin- 
gered long. John Taylor, of London (author of “ Our Inheritance 
in The Great Pyramid ”) is disposed to imagine that the name 
Philiton “ holds a remembrance of the expiatorial feasts, wherein 
is a shedding of blood for sin ; a characteristic of the religious 
idea of Abel, the first shepherd.” 

“ He looks,” remarks Piazzi Smyth, in “ Life at the Pyramid, 
*“ exceedingly like a Scriptural character. No man of humble 
origin or station would have been thus allowed a separate interest 
or identity among the Egyptians.” 

Jacob Bryant (“ Dissertations on Ancient History”) says: 
“ The Philitian Shepherds retired from Egypt to the land imme- 
diately south of that afterwards occupied by the tribe of Judah, 
11 


1G2 


MOSES. 


and later withdrew into the upper part of Mesopotamia, whither 
the ten tribes were driven after their dispersion.” 

When we consider that the life period of Noah’s sons extended 
to six hundred years, or thereabouts, and that his grandsons and 
great grandsons, in one line, reached the good old age of four 
hundred and thirty odd, and four' hundred and sixty odd years, 
we might not be far astray in supposing that Cheops, or Shofo, 
was the Hamitic parallel of Eber or Reu ; as Mizraim was of 
Nimrod and Arphaxad; and that Philiton, the shepherd king, was 
Melchizedek himself, who, later in his long and godly life, led 
his subjects out of apostatizing Egypt, and at Salem met Abraham 
and blessed him. 

King Shofo left his memory built in imperishable stone upon 
the face of the earth forever. The land of Egypt made rapid 
strides in grandeur and culture. Climate, soil, position, all were 
in its favor; learning flourished; the. arts were cherished. Living 
among themselves, going little beyond their own boundaries, these 
Chinese of antiquity, believing that nothing was good that was 
not Egyptian, as they fell more and more into their abominable 
idolatries, their kingdom grew rotten at the core, while it was out- 
wardly fair and flourishing. At the height of its grandeur, Apho- 
phis, or Appapus, swayed the sceptre. In his time Joseph came 
into Egypt, and from being a slave, was made prime minister. 

This Aphophis was a gentle sovereign, called to royalty in his 
childhood, and reigning nearly a century. Before him the vener- 
able Jacob bowed himself in unfeigned respect. 

The Bible, having nothing to do with the line of Egyptian 
sovereigns where they are not mingled with the history of the 
Church of God, next mentions the “ Pharaoh who knew not 
Joseph.” 

After the death of Aphophis, the government became an 
unlimited despotism ; and all the circumstances of the monarch’s 


MOSES. 


163 


life tended to make him a tyrant to the last degree, fearing not 
God, neither regarding men. The Israelites, who had been most 
tenderly planted and nourished in Goshen by the good Aphophis 
and Joseph, were more and more persecuted and degraded by his 
successors, until nrose Sesostris-Rameses, of Biblical mention, 
who del iberately trampled on all their ancient rights and chartered 
privileges, and ground them into the dust the most abject of 
slaves. 

By the character of this Sesostris-Rameses, Baron Bunsen seems 
entirely carried away. He makes him out a mighty conqueror, 
by sea and land (though where he could have gotten wood for 
his navies is a matter of curiosity), and says that he carried his 
conquests through Arabia, India, Persia, and all the world of 
Central Asia. 

On the contrary, Osburn, Renan and Smyth, show that Bun- 
sen’s Sesostris-Rameses and his deeds of valor, are priestly myths. 
The Sesostris who really lived had one conquest, one battle, one 
aim ; he conquered the Memphian sovereigns of Lower Egypt, in 
one fight, bringing all the land under the Theban sceptre. 

He devoted his life and treasures to memorials. He painted 
and carved his one conquest over all the palaces, tombs and tem- 
ples in his kingdom (thus deceiving some little while later Baron 
Bunsen !), and was in all respects a braggart, and most truculent 
knave. Like other boasters, this king was a terrible coward to 
the unseen ; he was the slave of priestly threats and superstitions ; 
in this like Philip II. of Spain. 

While Sesostris was exerting his authority over the Israelites, 
and making their lot most miserable, he was startled by a 
prophecy; from one of his astrologers, says Josephus — while the 
Targum of Jonathan says, by Jannes and Jambres, afterwards 
Moses’ opponents. 

The sacred scribe foretold that presently a child would be born 


164 


MOSES. 


to an Israelite, who would bring the Egyptians low, and exalt the 
Hebrews. 

This, says Josephus, was the mainspring of that terrible edict 
for the destruction of the male children. 

Sesostris-Rameses lived in Upper Egypt; the Hebrews were 
nearer Memphis, the seat of the Xoite dynasty. After his con- 
quest of the Delta, Sesostris married his daughter Thuoris (Jos. 
Thermuthis) to the two year old heir of the Xoites, Sipthatli ; 
and sent her to be regent of Memphis for this child husband. 

Thuoris seems to have been a gentle and learned woman, the 
very opposite of her royal father. 

Josephus tells us that God, in a night vision, showed Amram 
the future of his expected child, and encouraged him to rear him 
in hope, as the Deliverer of the nation. The manner of the 
infant’s birth, and his singular strength and beauty confirmed the 
Divine prediction; and x after three months, Amram, thinking his 
concealment a distrust of Providence, and likely to prove an 
injury to the child, committed him in faith to the river in a 
fragile ark of rushes. This ark was placed among those luxuriant 
reeds which have now nearly disappeared from Egypt. The 
\ mother departed, unable to endure the sight; yet clinging to the 
promise of the Eternal. Paul, in Hebrews, speaks of the faith 
of Moses’ parents, antecedent of the faith of their illustrious off- 
spring ; it was to him a most glorious heritage, and valued above 
a throne. 

As the child lay in his bed of reeds, Thuoris, queen regent, 
came to the river, and moved by womanly pity, and the craving 
of her childless heart, as well as by the wonderful beauty of the 
deserted babe, adopted him as her son. 

By the directing care of Providence, the child was brought up 
to years of discretion in the home of his own parents, and thus 
received that bias of devotion to the cause of his people ’which 
distinguished all his after life. 


MOSES. 


165 


“He was/’ says Josephus, “by the confession of all, as well as 
by Divine prediction, the best of all the Hebrews ; being the 
seventh from Abraham our Father. His tallness at three years 
old was wonderful ; and no one seeing him was so impolite as to 
disregard the beauty of his countenance ! ” 

“ He was exceedingly fair,” cries Stephen in his speech. And 
the writer of the Antiquities, delighting to dwell on the picture 
of the leader of his nation, explains that Thuoris presented the 
child to her father Sesostris, saying : “ I have brought up a child 
. of divine beauty and most generous mind. I received him as the 
gift of the river, and have adopted him for my son and heir.” 

The historian also declares, that at this time the child despised 
the diadem of Egypt, casting it from his brows ; and Jannes, the 
astrologer, renewed his prediction of ruin, directing it to Moses 
as the instrument, and striving to kill him, which the Lord pre- 
vented. 

Thuoris, therefore, educated Moses “ in all the wisdom of the 
Egyptians,” lavished on him the love that could not be called 
forth by her cruel father, or imbecile husband ; and expected to 
make him her successor in the kingdom. 

Sesostris-Rameses died after a reign of forty-four years. His 
only son succeeding him, reigned two years; at his death, Thuoris 
became sovereign of Upper, Middle and Lower Egypt. 

Josephus and Irenaeus state that during the regency of Thuoris, 
Moses, at her request, and that of the king, took command of the 
troops in a war with the Ethiopians ; besieged and captured Saba, 
afterwards Meroe, which was delivered up to him by Tharbis, the 
king’s daughter, who fell in love with the splendid appearance 
of the General of the Egyptians, and offered him the city and her 
hand, both of which were accepted. Perhaps this expedition and 
victory were referred to by Stephen, when he said that “ Moses 
Was mighty in words and in deeds.” 


166 


MOSES. 


The story of the surrender of the city is exactly that enshrined 
in the fable of Minos, king of Crete, and the siege of Megara, 
when Scylla, the king’s daughter, fell in love with the enemy, 
and delivered up to him the city, and the fated purple lock of 
Ninus. 

At the age of forty, Moses refused the position of heir apparent 
to the crown offered him by Thuoris. He “ refused to be called 
the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, preferring rather to suffer affliction 
with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a 
season.” 

Doubtless feeling in the vigor of his manhood great internal 
power, which would fit him for the deliverer of his race, Moses at 
that time expected to be recognized by his people as the messenger 
of God, and to lead the house of Jacob out of their weary captivity. 

But the Lord’s time had not yet come. The Israelites them- 
selves besottedly turned against their ardent compatriot, and 
Moses, heartsick and hopeless, fled into the land of Midian. 

Thuoris, having lost the cherished son of her adoption, devoted 
herself about equally to the building of a grand mausoleum for 
herself and her husband, and to the education of her brother’s 
only son and heir, who should succeed her in the empire. This 
nephew was Sethos II., whose character and history are developed 
in the preceding article on “ Pharaoh.” 

Manetho tells us that Moses was born and educated at On, or 
Heliopolis, and was instructed in all the learning of Greek, 
Chaldee, and Assyrian literature; and “was especially trained in 
mathematics, to prepare his mind for the reception of truth.” 
He taught Orpheus, and was thence called by the Greeks Musseus, 
and by the Egyptians Hermes. (For these statements see Philo 
V. M. i. 5.) 

The Egyptians made frequent conspiracies against the life of 
this distinguished Israelite. 


/ 

MOSES. 167 

While Moses lias ever been noted as the meekest of men, he 
was a person of vast courage. The fire of patriotism in his heart 
prompted him to slay an aggressing Egyptian, and also to be the 
peacemaker between his brethren. Flying from the assassin into 
the land of Midian, for forty long years Moses was lost to his 
countrymen, to his friends, and his foes ; and apparently to his 
work. 

Moses, continuing his flight in Midian — here first mentioned 
in history — arrives probably at the peninsula of Sinai, inhabited 
by the Arabians. Here he married Zipporah, the daughter of a 
priest, his first host in the country. 

During these forty years of Moses’ exile, King Sethos was 
wringing out to Israel the bitter dregs of their cup of misery ; 
the enslaved nation was being prepared by affliction to welcome 
deliverance; and chiefly, Moses was being moulded and perfected 
for his future greatness by the hand of God. 

The lonely shepherd, leading his flock on the confines of the 
desert, had time to apply the garnered knowledge of his life to 
the problems in the history and need of his people. In the 
seclusion and simplicity of his servile life, the learned courtier 
became endued with the prophetic spirit. Removed from the 
glaring splendor, and the rank idolatry of the Egyptian court, 
this Moses grew in spiritual graces. Divided from earthly cares 
and enchantments, his soul fixed itself in a passion of devotion 
first on his Lord, with whom he pleaded afterward : “ I beseech 
thee, show me thy glory ; ” and next on his people, for whom 
his love grew so strong and pitiful, that he could cry : “ If thou 
wilt not forgive them, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book, 
which thou hast written ! ” 

Year after year of desolate exile rolled on. When a son was 
born to him the wanderer sighs his name— Gershom, “ for I have 
been a stranger in a strange land.” 


168 


MOSES. 


It was his whole history wrapped up in a single word. He 
was born a stranger in the foreign land of Egypt ; Midian was 
his second abode of exile; long was the wandering in the wilder- 
ness, and or ever his pilgrim feet had touched the blessed shores 
of Canaan, the true home of the Hebrews, he must die upon 
Nebo. A pilgrim and a stranger, he knew no fatherland, until 
he entered the “city that hath foundations, whose maker and 
builder is God.” 

When this forty years of probation had passed, Moses received 
his distinct call as the prophet leader of his people. God’s time 
had come. While once the man had been eager to assume his 
place, he is now sorely distrustful. His self-distrust passes out 
of humility into absolute weakness, and thus kindles the wrath 
of God. 

Such a wonderful experience as had been vouchsafed to 
Abraham beside his sacrifice, and at his tent door; and to Jacob 
on the hill Bethel, and by the ford Jabbok, came to Moses on the 
back of the desert, in the plain of Horeb, the mountain of God. 

Here the Angel of the Covenant appeared to him as a flame of 
fire. This was such a flame as had blazed at the gate of Eden 
between the cherubim then, as afterwards on the mercy seat — 
“ Thou that dwellest between the cherubim ! ” Meeting Abra- 
ham, Jehovah was the “God of Glory,” as says Stephen; and 
from the burning, yet unconsumed bush, the Angel proclaimed 
himself the “ God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of 
Jacob.” 

Here begins a singular argument and struggle of Moses with 
God. The wondering prophet drew near to see the strange sight 
of a thorny acacia, which, glowing with the Divine presence, was 
an unquenchable, inexhaustible torch. He recognized the Holy 
One, and put off his shoes before he trod upon the sacred ground. 
But even with the voice of God sounding in his ears, this prophet 


MOSES. 


169 


of eighty, hearing the glorious promise of deliverance, seeing the 
wonders wrought in his own person, commended by the Lord of 
his life, yet pleads and protests, grown for the first and last time 
a coward. “ Who am I, that I should stand before Pharaoh ? 
The people will not believe me. I am slow of speech. I am not 
eloquent . . . send by the hand thou shouldst send.” 

But just here we touch the secret of all Moses’ future bravery; 
we learn how he can stand firm before despotic Pharaoh ; and 
undaunted before the raging mob of the Israelites. “ The wrath 
of God was kindled against him.” Its instantaneous blaze con- 
sumed all his resistance and self-will, and left him plastic in the 
Divine hand ; but after that sudden exhibition and experience cf 
Almighty fury, Moses could see nothing human to fear. 

He saw the glory of God, and would remain forever undazzled 
by the splendors of earth. He saw the wrath of the Lord, and 
when that passed by him like the lightning’s flash, he had for- 
gotten how to be afraid. 

Going forth to do the bidding of the Lord, Moses was met by 
Aaron at that holy mount. 

The brothers were eighty, and eighty-three years of age ; but 
time had perfected, instead of marring them. 

Their lofty bearing, firm and eloquent speech, and resolute 
gaze, marked them as leaders, born and trained for their position. 

The history of the ten plagues, and of the passage of the Bed 
Sea, has been already given ; and we next find Moses in Shur, at 
the head of that mixed and turbulent host, who had gone three 
days’ journey into the wilderness, and found no water. 

This multitude did not consist merely of men, brave of soul 
and inured to hardship. There were thousands of babes, whose 
veiling cries would melt the stoutest hearts; there w^ere frail 
women, viiose new privations v’ould crush the spirits of fathers 
and husbands ; there v^ere the old, trembling on the brink of the 


170 


MOSES. 


grave; and flocks and lowing herds, the riches of a pastoral 
people, who, in losing them, would lose their all. The Israelites 
were, beyond doubt, sorely tried ; and, save in a few instances, 
they have ever shown themselves a faithless nation ; they have 
been glorified with such names as Abraham, Moses, Samuel, 
David, Daniel, Gedaliah, but as a people have not been so noble 
of soul as to prefer death to slavery ; nor to be able to cry : 
“ Though he. slay me, yet will I trust in him ! ” 

From the moment when the high-hearted Moses ended his song 
of deliverance on the shores of the Red Sea, hq was forced to 
contend with a rebellious, unbelieving and idolatrous people; 
with the envy of friends and family ; with ingratitude, disobedi- 
ence, and the grossest misapprehension of those who should have 
best understood him. 

For forty years after the Exodus, the history of Moses is the 
history of Israel. Some have so misconceived the character of 
this wonderful man, as to consider him rather a passive than an 
active instrument in the Divine hand ; as though he bore no con- 
scious part in actions or messages, but that they flowed through 
him as through some soulless implement. This is a low view of 
the man ; of his ruling motive ; and of his Master. 

He was a hero of marvellous gifts, highly endowed by nature ; 
wonderfully tutored by experience; filled with wisdom that is 
from above; and brought into a closeness of intercourse with 
God, such as was never vouchsafed to any other Old Testament 
character. 

Of him the Lord said : “ If there is a prophet among you, I, 
the Lord, will make myself known to him in a vision, and will 
speak unto him in a dream. But my servant Moses is not so, 
with him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and 
not in dark speeches ; and the similitude of the Lord will he 
behold.” 


MOSES. 


171 


Moses, as a leader, was the most discreet, energetic, decided, 
long-suffering, and self-sacrificing that the world has ever known. 

As a general, he had military talents of the first order ; as his 
campaigns against Sihon and Og fully prove. We are apt to 
forget that, at the time of his death, Moses was as great in warlike 
renown, as Joshua ever became. 

As an orator, his last address to Israel proves him' most elo- 
quent ; if he were indeed “ slow of speech ” in Midian, his defect 
must have been done away on Sinai. 

His songs show him one of the most rapt and felecitous of all 
the glorious line of Hebrew poets. 

As a judge and law-giver, he must have been wonderfully 
eminent, even if we leave out of the account the grand code of 
laws which he received on the mountain ; for Jethro, his father- 
in-law, found him bearing the burdens of all that mighty host 
encamped in Rephidim ; busy from morning unto evening in 
adjusting the differences, and settling the grievances of six hun- 
dred thousand men. The greatest jurist of modern times would 
not pretend to such a position. 

When we consider Moses as a prophet,, it will suffice us to 
remember that he was the high and shining centre of a great 
prophetic circle; and that the Lord himself proclaims of Moses, 
that there arose not like unto him a prophet since in Israel. 

Moses was singularly free from all selfish ambition. God 
never offered a man such an opportunity to aggrandize his family, 
as he did to Moses, saying : “ Let me alone, that my wrath may 
wax hot against them, and that I may consume them : and I 
will make of thee a great nation.” 

Never has there been exhibited such an instance of the power 
of God’s saints in staying his hand, and lengthening out his 
mercies and forgiveness to the ungodly, as when Moses cried out : 
“ Remember thy covenant! Why should the Egyptians say, 


172 


MOSES. 


For mischief did he bring them out. Forgive them ... or blot 
me out of thy book.” 

"And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do.” 

While thus living in his nation’s good, bearing its woes, repent- 
ing of its sins, clinging fast to its promises for the future, Moses 
was not of a stolid nature which cannot be aroused to strong 
feelings. He slew the aggressing Egyptian : he went out from 
Pharaoh in great anger ; his anger waxed hot when he saw the 
calf and the dancing, and he cast those precious sapphire tables 
from his hands — tables traced with the golden finger prints of God. 

He was angry with Eleazar and Ithamar, because they had not 
eaten the sin-offering in the holy place ; but when Aaron explained 
their sufficient reason, at once he was content. 

Alas, he was also filled with anger, and this, in an unholy 
manner, in Kadesh, and crying to Israel, “ Hear now, ye rebels, 
must we bring you water out of this rock ? ” lost his entrance 
into the promised land. 

The self forgetting of this man shines out very beautifully 
when he says to Joshua so tenderly : “ Enviest thou for my sake? 
I would God, that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that 
the Lord would put his Spirit upon them.” 

When that supreme moment comes, and the Lord warns him : 
“ Get thee into Mount Abarim . . . thou also shnlt be gathered to 
thy people, as Aaron thy brother was gathered.” Then the soul 
of Moses speaks eagerly, not for himself, but for others : " Let 
the Lord God ... set a man over this congregation . . . which 
may lead them out and bring them in ; that the congregation of 
the Lord be not as sheep which have no shepherd.” 

Moses has been celebrated as the meekest of men, from the 
passage: "Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men 
that were upon the face of the earth.” 

Perhaps, if meek had been rendered disinterested , or long 


MOSES. 


173 


suffering , or unselfish , we should come nearer the true meaning 
of the original ; and have a better exposition of the chief trait of 
the man. 

Another eminent characteristic was his reliance on God. To 
God he resorted in all his private troubles ; in all his anxieties 
for his people ; in every difficult question. 

When Shelomith’s son blasphemed ; when Zelophead’s daugh- 
ters claimed their inheritance; when a man gathered sticks on the 
Sabbath day, Moses ventured on no unassisted judgment; but 
appealed for the verdict of the Lord. When accused by Korah 
and his company of arrogance, all his reply was to fall on his face, 
and pour forth the silent anguish of his soul to his Maker. 

At his own request, seventy of the elders of Israel received pro- 
phetic spirit, and executive power ; and when Jethro advises him 
in a plan for a division of the administrative functions, he at once 
agrees, and gives the honor of the plan to its author. 

The life of Moses was full of beautiful and wonderful types, 
and lessons for the saints in all ages. We are able but to hint of 
a few, that seeing the richness of the treasure to be gained from 
the study of this history, each may pursue it for himself. 

At Marah bitter waters mocked the thirsty and fainting people. 
Children wailed to their mothers for drink ; fever parched the 
fair faces of the women ; the strength of the strong man failed ; 
and the eyes of the herds grew red, and their tongues hung from 
their mouths for thirst. They looked for help in Marah, and lo, 
the nauseous and poisonous tide renewed their pains. Then 
Moses cut a branch from a tree which God showed him, and cast 
it into the cruel stream, and the water became sweet. 

Thus Christ, fair branch of life’s immortal tree, is cast into the 
bitter streams of this painful, unsatisfying world, and man’s 
sojourn below becomes his stepping-stone to heaven ; becomes the 
preparation for his everlasting rest ; and is no longer a bane, but 
is a boon. 


174 


MOSES. 


At Rephidim, again the people cried out for water, the grand 
need in a desert. At the word of the Lord, Moses smote the rock 
in Horeb, and water flowed forth — an unfailing supply. As says 
the Apostle : “ They drank of that spiritual rock which followed 
them : and that Rock was Christ.” Here the Apostle renders 
the Old Testament Symbol so plain, that he may run who 
readeth it. 

In his intercession Moses is a type of God’s Church. The 
Church delays the destruction of a world, heedless and unthank- 
ful for her power. Over how many a godless man’s way have the 
prayers of a mother, which are lying not unheeded before the 
throne, brought blessings. How many dangers have a Christian 
father’s pleadings averted from his children ; how . many souls 
have been given as an answer to importunate prayers. 

How have pestilences been removed, wars ended, famines pre- 
vented, by the strong cryings of God’s beloved for mercy. “Let 
me ‘alone, that my anger may wax hot,” said God. “Remember 
Abraham, Isaac and Israel, thy servants,” replied Moses, standing 
fearless in the breach. 

As a Prophet, the Lord himself holds this Moses as a singular 
type of the Mediator God-man. “ They have well spoken ... I 
will raise up a Prophet from among thy brethren, like unto thee.” 

The people dared not abide the terrors of the law, they' prayed 
one to stand between them and the great fire ; the Almighty voice. 
So God would for the fearful majesty of the law give them the 
tenderness of the Gospel, through a Prophet like unto Moses. 
Lest this promise might be in any manner misapplied, Stephen 
develops it in his inspired address before the council. 

This brings us to another point in which Moses was a type of 
Christ. “ Like unto thee,” says God. “ Moses was exceeding 
fair,” says Scripture; “of divine beauty,” say traditions. He 
was of the comeliest, noblest, most striking and glorious bearing; 


MOSES. 


175 


when he died, at the great age of one hundred and twenty years, 
his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. We have no 
sympathy with the proclamation of a physically marred, feeble, 
imperfect Jesus. We believe that Moses types him in being 
“ fairer than the children of men;” “ grace is poured into thy 
lips ! ” 

He was the “ fullness of the godhead, bodily ; ” the “ express 
image” of the Father’s person. He was the “strong son of God,” 
incorruptible, untainted, perfect, physically, as Adam before he 
fell. He bare oui* sicknesses as he bare our sins, in the profound 
knowledge and sympathy and tenderness of his infinite soul. 

“ There arose not a Prophet since in Israel like unto Moses.” 
He was without a peer, until there walked forth a man in Galilee, 
one “chiefest among ten thousand,” “ altogether lovely,” “his 
head like fine gold,” “ his countenance as Lebanon, excellent as 
the cedars.” “This is the Church’s beloved, and this is her 
friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.” 

Moses typed the Church of God when he was hidden in the 
cleft of the rock, and covered by the Almighty hand. 

“I beseech thee, show me thy glory,” was the outpouring of 
the sensuous Egyptian worship, diverted to the channels of grace. 
The Lord replies : “ Thou canst not see my face, for no man 
can see me and live. Behold there is a place by me, and thou 
shalt stand on a rock, and it shall come to pass while my glory 
passeth by, that I will put thee in the cleft of the rock, and 
cover thee with my hand.” 

Thus from the storm of God’s wrath, from the consuming 
splendors of his face, from all the terrors of the judgment day, 
the Church of the Living shall be secure ; standing like Moses 
on a rock, hidden in a cleft, covered by the Lord’s hand ; for 
Bock, and Cleft, and hiding Hand, shall be none other than the 
Tehovah Angel, the Man Christ Jesus! 


176 


MOSES. 


“ ’Tis he, the Lamb ! to him we fly 
When the dread tempest passes by ; 

God sees his well beloved’s face, 

And spares us in our hiding-place.” 

For forty days, upon two separate occasions, Moses abode on 
the mount, and did neither eat nor drink. 

Elijah and Christ alone have partaken of such an experience. 

When Moses returned from his long communion with God, his 
face shone, and lie “ wist it not.” There is many an humble 
believer, of whom all men take knowledge that he has been with 
Jesus, but he does not realize the radiant beauty of his daily life. 
Intercourse with Christ sets its bright seal upon men ; and here 
below they shine with a reflection of the beauty of the upper 
Sanctuary. 

Moses, in the wilderness, lifted up the brazen serpent; standing 
between the living and the dead, like Aaron with the censer, and 
staying the plague. “Look and Live,” was the word; it was a 
whole Gospel in three syllables. Christ shows its meaning to 
Nicodemus : “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so 
shall the Son of Man be lifted up.” 

In these all too cursory and unsatisfying glances at the life of 
Moses, we come to some of the points where his active faith is 
exhibited, and close with the unparalleled hour, when that faith 
reaches its highest development, and becomes the choice legacy of 
the Church forever. 

Upon some of these salient points, the Apostle Paul seizes in 
his Epistle to the Hebrews. “ By faith, Moses, when he was 
come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter.” 
This is no idle story; no record of small sacrifice; it tells us of a 
man who, in the prime of his power, at an epoch when the actual- 
ities of life are most potent, when the lust of glory is most ardent, 
turned his back on the grandest throne beneath the sun ; on 
Heliopolis, school and patron of art and science; on Egypt, 


MOSES. 


177 


fairest, richest, most fertile kingdom ; on a crown whose lustre 
outshone all others then on royal brows, and chose poverty, con- 
tumely, proscription, weary travail, all because it was better to 
suffer affliction with the people of God for a while below, and 
enter with them the rest that remaineth, than to enjoy the 
pleasures of sinffor a season. 

“ By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king.” 
He was a favored courtier, he became the tutor of slaves ; yea 
more, himself the servant of Jethro, the shepherd. It was no 
small thing to dare the wrath of Pharaoh, in an effort to redeem 
his serfs from bondage. 

“ By faith he kept the Passover, and the sprinkling of blood, 
lest he that destroyed the first-born should touch them.” 

Perhaps we should have passed this over in the list of mighty 
works , had not inspiration especially directed attention to it. 
But consider the faith which could stand up, and, in face of 
friend and foe, predict that most wonderful visitation — the death 
of every first-born of man and beast in all that great nation ; and 
then should propose by death to save from death : by the slain 
lamb to rescue the Hebrew first-born, and standing in the full 
splendor of an Egyptian day, should strike blood on the door 
post as a sign for that invisible destroyer, who was to pass by in 
the solemn darkness of night. This was faith indeed. 

Was it a natural or ordinary occurrence, the refluence of the 
sea waves, that for miles of dry pathway nearly a million of 
people might go through in safety ? But Moses, with the clamor- 
ous host of triumphant Egyptians pressing on the rear of the 
terrified Israelites, speaks to his people that they “go forward,” 
go on when the land’s limit is reached ; and stretching out his 
rod, expects and obtains a path such as mortal foot never before 
trod, and sees the wall of waters towering up on either side, clear 
and firm as the crystal battlements of the new Jerusalem. 

12 


178 


MOSES. 


It was a deed of loftiest faith to lead into the wilderness a body 
of six hundred thousand men, besides the mixed multitude, the 
women and the children, without provisions for the journey, in a 
waste destitute of water, when their progress would necessarily be 
very slow, and all that lay at the end of the way was the 
promise of exterminating a strong people, who were of unusual 
physical development, skilled in war, and dwelt in cities “ walled 
up to heaven.” 

The Philistines were a race of soldiers ; the Hebrews of shep- 
herds. They were naturally about as equally matched as a lion 
and a lamb. Yet the strong faith of the leader assured his people 
that they should enter in and possess that land, because he had 
seized firm hold of the truth that Jehovah would be their Captain, 
and nerve every arm with his own eternal strength. 

What a steadfastness of faith was required to lay down to that 
dissatisfied, envious, rebellious people of Israel, a code of laws 
and worship so different from the customs they had learned in 
Egypt; so severe upon the idolatry with which they were most 
deeply tinctured ; forbidding them all images, paintings and 
similitudes, because they had seen no manner of similitude on the 
day when the Lord spoke to them out of Horeb. 

Every occasion on which Moses promised his people flesh, 
bread, water, in the wilderness, drew upon him for a faith greater 
than that possessed by all the million of the Israelites. 

Every judgment which he pronounced, every punishment 
whereby he vindicated the outraged honor of his Lord, required 
such grand faith as has ornamented the martyrs; for before him 
stood the enraged people like wild beasts at bay, yet making 
ready to spring in a last paroxysm of fufy : they “ were ready to 
stone him ; ” murder glared from their eyes, as “ they chode with 
him.” 

All his prayers for help in direful extremity ; all his pleadings 


MOSES. 


179 


for mercy in the midst of “ plagues and burnings ; ” all his 
battles, bringing his undisciplined horde against their superior 
foe, were achievements of faith. This faith stayed the wrath of 
the Eternal, and procured the presence of the Angel. 

Behold his faith’s last triumph in the victory over death. Life 
was strong in his veins; his foot was swift as the roe on the 
mountains ; his hand was steady ; his eye was like the eaglets ; 
his form was erect as the cedar; age had scattered no hoar-frosts 
on his brow, written no lines on his cheek ; the clarion tones of 
the leader rung out full and clear as when he, at life’s prime, 
refused the throne of Egypt. 

In all this abounding strength he was called on to make ready 
to die. He might not lie down in his tent, surrounded by chil- 
dren and friends, counselling and blessing them : alone he was to 
climb the mountain of Nebo, and standing on the brink of his 
lonely grave, look his last on earth, in the midst of some great 
silence. 

This desolation and loneliness would be the limning of natural 
imagination. But the supreme faith of Moses saw something 
very different. He saw that from the fullness of strength in this 
life, he should step into the immortal vigor of the life to come. 
His last sight would be the length and breadth, the splendid 
future of the land of Israel’s inheritance, even unto the coming 
of the Son of Man. The Lord God would be with him in the 
valley of the shadow of death. No sepulchre built for the sons 
of men; not the grandeur of the Pyramids; not the Theban 
tombs ; not the gorgeous mausoleums of kings ; not the burial 
place of Hephsestion, whereon Alexander lavished his fortune ; 
not the jewelled Taj, or the sculptured splendors of Greek and 
Roman crvpts and shrines, could be compared to the last resting- 
place of Moses — for u The Lord buried him in a valley in the 
land of Moab/over against Bethpeor, and no man knoweth of his 
sepulchre unto this day.” 


180 


MOSES. 


The faith of Moses sufficed him for all the emergencies of this 
life, and for the exigency of death. 

To that solemn burial, perchance, came the hosts of God to 
perform funeral rites. Angels, archangels, and cherubim may 
have looked on the sacred dead, whom no human eye saw, and 
laying the clods of that Moabite valley over his clay, accompanied 
his soul into the city of God. 

We hear of Moses, the exponent of the law, accompanying 
Elijah, Prince of Prophets, to the holy mount where the Christ 
of the Gospel shone, transfigured into his heavenly beauty. 

Jude tells us that, about the body of Moses, the Devil disputed 
with Michael. Perchance that evil spirit held then what he has 
ever loved to teach, that “ there is no resurrection of the dead.” 

The word of the Lord to Moses was : u Thou shalt be gathered 
to thy people, as thy brother Aaron was gathered to his people.” 

“ God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” “ The 
people” of Moses were the souls of just men made perfect; the 
redeemed in the upper sanctuary, the Church of the first-born : 
to these Moses was to go. He was to be gathered to his people. 
This, his last joyful assurance; his last object of faith, re-union 
with his saved and sanctified brethren, was his legacy to all 
believers to come. The dying believer has no dreary void, no 
unknown waste before him. But he shall see Jesus as he is, and 
seeing be like him. Where Jesus is, there also shall his ser- 
vants be. 

Bright vision that dawned on the last hour of Moses; his 
warfare was accomplished; his iniquity was pardoned; he went 
to join, and be one of his people, those cherubim near the throne, 
who cry : “ Thou art worthy to take the book and to open the 
seals, for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy 
blood.” 

“ There arose no Prophet like to Moses.” He was a giant in 


MOSES. 


181 


all that captivates the human heart. Wondrous in personal 
power and beauty ; a pure unpurchasable patriot ; a Prince of 
statesmen ; a most unselfish benefactor to his race ; purged of 
private ambition. He could command the forces of nature ; pray 
open the windows of heaven ; control a whole nation in a tempest 
of passion ; vindicate the right, punish the wrong ; sympathize 
with all sorrow ; subdue armies of foes, and leave the impress of 
his admirable wisdom and virtue on all coming time. 


f 


MIRIAM AND DEBORAH. 


THE THEOCRATIC STATUS OF WOMAN. 


“ I read before mine eyelids dropt their shade 
‘ The Legend ol Good Women,’ long ago 
Sung by the morning star of song, who made 
His music heard below * 

“ Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath 
Preluded those melodious bursts that fill 
The spacious times of great Elizabeth 
With sounds that echo still.” 

HUS the “ Legend of Good Women” was written, and 
later the “ Dream of Fair Women,” by another master in 
the art of song ; yet have they left unsung two, whom the 
Scripture sets before us as glorious types of womanhood, 
both in domestic and public life ; two who teach us the status of 
woman before her God; and in these times when the questions of 
woman’s rights and position occupy so much attention, it is well to 
go back to the fountain of all truth, and draw our lesson thence. 

Miriam and Deborah, separated by nearly three centuries, were 
twin souls, animated by the same high genius, by the same lofty 
patriotism, by the same ardor of self-sacrifice, by the same prophetic 
impulse. 

The traditions about Miriam differ, some asserting that she was 
a Jewish vestal, the vigin governess of the Israelitish women ; and 

the Talmud tells some singular stories of her office, power and 
182 



MIRIAM AND DEBORAH. 


183 


achievements. Josephus, on the contrary, states that she was the 
wife of Hur, of the royal family of Judah, and grandmother of 
Bezaleel, the divinely-gifted craftsman of the tabernacle. 

Hur was associated with Aaron on several especial occasions, as 
on the Mount he stayed up the hands of Moses ; and was left with 
Aaron in charge of the people during the absence of Moses on 
Sinai. We do not read that either Miriam or Hur consented to 
the idolatry of the calf 

Miriam is first mentioned as the eldest born of the wonderful 
family of Amram the Levite. Through all her life she retains 
that ascendancy which in childhood she took as her natural right. 
Doubtless a young child at the important hour when the babe 
Moses was committed to the Nile, she was yet deemed capable of 
watching alone that frail bark and its most precious freight, whereon 
hung the destinies of a nation, we may say of a world. 

Artists have loved to paint the loveliness of that earnest child- 
face ; the dark Hebrew beauty, the shade of a new care mingled 
with the sunny bouyancy of her childhood ; mother, sister, guardian 
angel, all in one, peering through the tall reeds by the river. She 
is too full of her parents’ faith to believe her brother will perish ; 
she has heard of the vision foretelling the babe’s destiny, and awe 
mingles with her tender looks ; there, is pity too for the forlorn 
case of the nursling ; fear lest it should suffer ; wonder as to what 
will happen. The enthusiasm and imagination of the child-woman 
are wrought up to the highest point ; she has been nurtured in 
Egypt, a land teeming with fable ; and perhaps expects now some 
wonderful spiritual manifestation. When the princess takes the 
babe, the watching Miriam fully justifies her parents’ trust in her 
capacity. Recognizing the human saving agency, she at once 
boldly projects the return of the babe to its mother’s bosom ; and 
shrewdly works for it. We see her plan growing in her mind; 
die is not over-hasty; she permits the child to cry, and the princess 


184 


MIRIAM AND DEBORAH. 


to compassionate for a while ; with wonderful self-repression she 
gives no sign of recognition, or personal interest ; she speaks to the 
point, strong common sense ; and when she goes for her mother, 
most likely she indicates to Jochebed the part that is to be played ; 
and Jochebed receives it as a heavenly inspiration. 

These traits, thus early shining forth, were only strengthened 
with the strength of Miriam’s advancing years. 

“ Miriam, the prophetess,” is her acknowledged title at the time 
of the Exodus, and she is the first person in the sacred household 
to whom the prophetic gift is directly ascribed. This inspiration 
took the same form in which it displayed itself in Samuel, David, 
and others — poetry, accompanied by music and processions. 

The sister evidently shared the unusual personal beauty, and 
more particularly the remarkable physical vigor and long-ex- 
tended youthfulness of her brothers. Though at the time of the 
Exodus she must have been nearly ninety years of age, she takes 
her timbrel and goes forth before all the women of the Hebrews, 
leading their triumphal procession, singing and dancing in the 
joy of the deliverance. Clear over all the host rang the words 
of her praise, which they caught up and repeated, echoing them 
over desert and sea, as the waves rolled their dead foes to their 
feet. “ Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously ! 
The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.” 

Miriam also must have shared the superior culture of her 
brothers, for she is ever mentioned as their peer ; and she ever 
maintains toward them an independent and high position. In 
Numbers, twelfth and first, she is mentioned before Aaron as the 
leading spirit who swayed his judgment; while Micah the prophet 
names her as one of the three deliverers of the Hebrews : “ And 
I sent before thee Moses, Aaron and Miriam.” This last passage 
suffices to fix her position as one of high honor and leadership. 

This princess of the Hebrews was a proud woman, and her na- 


MIRIAM AND DEBORAH. 


185 


tional zeal was boundless. The Cushite wife of Moses found little 
favor in her eyes. Perhaps she felt the pure blood of the priestly 
race polluted by union with one who had not Abraham to her 
father. Perhaps the daughter of Jethro defied some of the na- 
tional customs, or undervalued the national privileges of the He- 
brews. She certainly appears in a most unfavorable light in the 
journey from Midian to Egypt. Miriam failed, however, in that 
she did not yield to the inevitable. Respecting the sanctity of the 
connubial tie, she should have felt that the marriage of her brother 
was a fixed fact, which could in no wise be bettered by arousing 
strife, and expressing dissatisfaction. The Cushite wife was a wife 
in very truth, and as such it behooved Miriam silently to accept 
her. 

But in her family and national pride, Miriam urges her feelings 
on Aaron, until he is brought to the same indignation as herself, 
# and together they attack Moses. The fashion of the onset is sin- 
gular, they say : “ Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses ? 
Hath he not spoken also by us ? ” 

Here Miriam claims a parity with Aaron, which he does not 
dispute. The High Priest and his sister assert the same prophetic 
gift in equal ratio ; and the Lord does not challenge their claim. 
He only makes it plain, that while they may be inspired, and that 
equally, they are far below the measure of his servant Moses, like 
whom there is none other. 

When the Lord in anger had rebuked them and departed, lo 
Miriam, as the prime leader of the wrong, was covered with the 
abhorred Egyptian leprosy. 

The proud prophetess could not have received a greater blow, 
and the cry of horror which at once rises from her two brothers, 
attests the lofty dignity of her station, and their own ardent love 
for her. 

Not only this, but the whole nation is bowed in silent grief ; 


186 


MIRIAM AND DEBORAH. 


and during the seven days of her ostracism from the camp, the 
host of Israel abode in Hazeroth in keenest sympathy, waiting 
for the restoration of their prophetess. 

Miriam died in Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin, in the month 
Xanthicus, in the fortieth year of the wanderings, says Josephus. 
In the same year died Aaron, aged one hundred and twenty-three, 
an age which his sister surpassed by some years. Josephus tells 
us that the people made Miriam a great and costly funeral, and 
mourned for her thirty days, as they afterwards did for Aaron. The 
Arabians claim that her sepulchre is yet extant in Petra, as also 
that of Aaron. 

We see from the history of Miriam, that when God called the 
people of Israel out of Egypt, giving the nation manners, laws, 
customs, exactly such as were pleasing to him, he made it evident 
in the position which he accorded Miriam, that woman was 
neither a slave, a plaything, nor a household drudge; but was 
meant by her Maker, as man is meant, for any station, public or 
private, where she was needed. Womanhood suffered in Miriam 
no degradation in occupying a public place, because there was a 
demand for her in that place. God chose one especial family to 
lead his Israelites to freedom. He found in that family a daughter 
as well as two sons; and he used her as he used her brothers, in 
some particular part of the leadership. Aaron did not do the 
work of Moses, nor Moses of Aaron; neither of them did Miriam’s. 
One says, “but she was especially inspired.” Yes; and so were 
Moses and Aaron. It was a particular emergency. Every age is 
full of particular emergencies. 

<f But she sinned, in regard to the marriage of Moses.” True, 
she did sin ; God works below, by imperfectly sanctified instru- 
ments. Aaron sinned when he made the calf ; Moses, at the rock 
in Horeb. We do not hear that Miriam’s integrity failed on 
either of these occasions. 


MIRIAM AND DEBORAH. 


187 


^The gift of Miriam shows that the spirit of prophecy, like 
genius, has .no sex. However, in these days we find many — and 
that of both sexes — who undertake to prophesy having received 
no afflatus but in their own imagination. 

There were many men in Israel who rose up to strive with 
Moses and Aaron for the leadership. We do not read that the 
women of the nation ever made such an attempt, to wrest power 
from Miriam. This speaks well for their common sense. Miriam 
had been gifted and trained for her position ; she was equal to it, 
and that capacity vindicated her divine right to occupy it. 

Women, it has been said, have no right to interfere with 
government; it is not their part to rule nations. Possibly the 
Lord thought differently, when he cut off all the male heirs of the 
crown of England, and put Victoria upon the throne. Just as 
evidently he has never given any woman a call to the Presidency 
of the United States. If He ever does, he will make it so plain 
that no one can dispute it, more than they can dispute his call to 
other rulers. 

France has Salic Law; England has none. Salic Law de- 
livered France over to the long line of the dissolute Louis, and 
the Revolution ; absence of that law in England made Elizabeth 
sovereign, and the land Protestant. 

Theories have been advanced, asserting what a woman may 
and can do ; what she may not, and must not do. These assert 
tions, on both sides of the Woman’s Status question, are called 
“ Divine principles : ” they are directly antagonistic to each other, 
yet each is claimed as taught by human instinct, and the revela- 
tion of heaven ! 

We do not understand that God has hedged himself in by any 
of these rules ; He has shown that He gives men and women mis- 
sions, irrespective of sex. There was nothing but Divine inten- 
tion to hinder Amram from having three sons, instead of a 


1S8 


MIRIAM AND DEBORAH. 


daughter and two sons. But the Divine intention proved a great 
matter ; and if that intention had been to teach that the status of 
women was ever and undeniably to be domestic privacy, and 
entire separation from public life, cares, action, and the great 
deeds of the world, the Lord took a most singular fashion to teach 
the lesson, in setting Miriam, Deborah, Jael, Huldah, Priscilla, 
and others in Holy Writ. 

There is no disputing that all the great deeds which God has 
performed by the hands of women, he might have performed by 
the hands of men. When he has made women rulers, prophet- 
esses, and warriors, he might have placed men in those positions 
instead. His employing women as he has, for such labors, has 
shown that there is no divinely ordained incongruity between 
women and any of these offices. In general terms, God has 
assigned men one line of work in the world, and women another ; 
in physical conformation, he has fitted them for their grand and 
customary departments of labor ; but he has made it no sin to go 
out of one sphere into the other, if there is necessity for it. 
Women rear babes, and guide the house; men till the soil, and 
strong-armed defend the home. But there have been some small 
muscled men, and some very large muscled women. As a general 
principle, men had better guide the ploughshare ; but there have 
been women who have handled that implement excellently well, 
because there was a necessity. 

“ Necessity knows no law,” is a frequent saying. Let us alter 
it to “ Necessity makes a law.” 

This law of necessity is developing new phases of feeling. 
“ The spirit of the age has always kept pace with facts, and out- 
stripped the statutes.” Let us say, that “ the spirit of the age” 
is nothing more than the recognition of the necessities evolved by 
that age ; let us also add, that as nothing is ever gained by run- 
ning before Providence, so nothing is ever made by going with a 
loud clamor before the call of necessitv. 


MIRIAM AND DEBORAH. 


189 


Progress is not made by flying before demand, by becoming an 
avant-courier, like Malise bearing Clan Alpine’s cross of fire. 

Best wisdom waits prepared, like Roderick’s “ plaided warriors 
armed for strife,” until need gives the signal. Not the messenger 
henchman, but the waiting host, was to gain victory. When 
once the rash and blatant age has learned the true Theocratic 
Status of Woman, they will see that God set her as man’s equal, 
as he has made men equal one with another. Between man and 
man, as between man and woman, there are muscular and intel- 
lectual variations. The first Divine Right of Woman is, to do 
her own duty in her own particular sphere ; and the second right 
is, to be wise enough to Enow when she has the call and capacity 
to fill any other sphere. 

But this legitimate position of woman has broadened with the 
broadening energies and culture of all the world; and the Avoman 
who now lives but to sew tapestry, make love, and forget her 
alphabet; or the woman who sets her whole mind on knitting 
and spinning, is behind her age ; as much as the general would 
be who should go into battle, clad in armor, carrying bow and 
arrows, and riding in a Avar chariot of the days of Alexander. 

The Bible is a book for all time : developing the thought of 
God for all human history. Miriam and Deborah Avere, per- 
chance, women before their age ; Avomen suited to the groAvth of 
later centuries, and shoAving Avhat place Avoman could lawfully 
occupy. 

We turn to Miriam’s sister soul, Deborah, the Prophetess and 
Judge of Israel, and there are some salient points in her history. 

Under that solitary land mark, the palm tree in Ephraim, later 
called Baal Tamar — the sanctuary of the palm — dAvelt Deborah, 
the Avife of Lapidoth. 

Ehud and Shamgar Avere dead : the long peace conquered by 
those men of valor Avas at an end ; and Israel’s sin had sold them 


190 


MIRIAM AND DEBORAH. 


to be slaves to Jabin, king of the Canaanites, who dwelt in Hazor. 
The right arm of Jabin's strength was Sisera, captain of the 
host; a very valiant man, who maintained an almost royal state 
on the spoils of his victories. 

Besides foot soldiers and horsemen, Sisera had in his command 
nine hundred chariots of iron. Very likely these were armed 
with scythes, and as they swept over the battle field, mowing 
down men like grain, they were indeed formidable implements of 
war ; and a people who could only equip themselves with bows 
and javelins, would easily be overborne by such a force. 

At this time God put his spirit upon Deborah, a woman of 
Ephraim, the wife of Lapidoth, and Israel recognizing her pro- 
phetic gift, went to her for judgment. From her lips they 
received instruction, advice, exhortation, reproof. To her they 
unfolded their griefs and difficulties, and from her they learned 
the error of their ways, the wrath and the forgiving mercy of 
their God. 

The high position of Deborah, as a judge of her people, did not 
militate against her true womanliness, or her domestic life. She 
judged Israel, but she exercised her office as the wife of Lapidoth, 
dwelling in the sanctity of his home. She did not go up and 
down the land to proclaim ner abilities ; to call the people to her 
standard; to inquire into their wants, or their wrong doing ? to 
exhibit her gifts and power. On the contrary, she dwelt under 
her palm tree, and when she was wanted, the people went to her. 

In courage, faith, patriotism, self-sacrifice, and humility, she 
was the very person suited to Israel's dire extremity ; this fitness 
in herself secured her the dominion, and that dominion she exer- 
cised just as circumstances demanded. 

For twenty years the people of Israel were punished for idol- 
atry, and were led back to their ancient faith, by cruel slavery. 
They had grown cowards exceedingly, because they were sinners 


MIRIAM AND DEBORAH. 


191 


exceedingly. Jabin’s iron yoke bowed the necks of the once free 
and holy people ; and they were weeping tears of blood. 

A woman of unusual faith, Deborah must also have been a 
woman of prayer, and under her palm tree, day and night, she 
had cried to her God for the salvation of her people. She mourned 
before the Lord, as afterwards she sung jubilantly to him. It 
was this woman’s faith and prayerfulness which made her a 
prudent ruler; this, her godliness, was her crown and her shield. 

At length the answer to her prayers came. She was informed 
from heaven that God would lead out Sisera and his host to the 
river Kishon. This should be the river of death to the army of 
Jabin, and its mighty waters should sweep away the oppressors 
of the Hebrews. 

The chariots and foot soldiers should perish; the proud head 
of Sisera should bow down under the clods of the valley beneath 
Tabor. Here was military glory waiting for some one, but 
Deborah did not seek it. 

It was written in her destiny that she should lead that line of 
warrior women who shine on the historic page; but a true woman, 
she did not covet such renown, and would willingly have waited 
for another victor, to sing his achievements beneath her palm. 

She sent for Barak, the son of Abinoam, a dweller in Kadesh- 
Naphtali. 

The tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali, lying near the territory 
of Jabin, felt most keenly his oppression ; it was meet, therefore, 
that they should bear the brunt of the warfare. 

Barak promptly obeyed the summons of the prophetess, and 
appeared before her. Deborah addressed him in words of fervent 
faith and patriotism, which would have stirred the most sluggish 
soul : 

“Hath not the Lord God of Israel commanded, saying, Go 
and draw toward Mount Tabor, and take with thee ten thousand 


192 


MIRIAM AND DEBORAH. 


men of the children of Naphtali, and of the children of Zebulun ? 
And I will draw unto thee, to the river Ivishon, bisera, the 
captain of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his multitude; and 
I will deliver him into thine hand.” 

Listening, Barak had more faith in the rapt prophetess than in 
his God ! Deborah’s grand courage drank its strength from the 
fountains of the Infinite, but Barak dwelt more in the seen. 

The enthusiasm of Deborah fired him ; she grasped the promise 
of the coming triumph, and her holy confidence rang in every 
tone. 

“ Her warbling voice, a lyre of widest range, 

Struck by all passion, did fall down and glance 
From tone to tone, and glided through all change 
Of livliest utterance. 

“ When she made pause, I knew not for delight : 

Because with sudden motion-from the ground 
She raised her piercing orbs, and filled with light 
The interval of sound 1 ” 

This woman could command victory, thought Barak, even in 
the face of six hundred armed iron chariots. 

And straightway he spoke his thought : “ If thou wilt go with 
me, I will go : but if thou wilt not go with me, I will not go ! ” 

We can imagine the look that swept over the noble face of that 
mother in Israel. Indignation, surprise at the faith in flesh and 
lack of confidence in God, half scorn, and abundant self-sacrifice. 
She had not sought to lead the army; she had avoided it, but 
the fate of Israel rested on her heroism. It was needful for her 
to lead the advance of the ten thousand Hebrews; this being so, 
she could do it. 

There was reproof in her answer. “ I will surely go with thee : 
notwithstanding the journey which thou takest shall not be for 
thine honor ; for the Lord shall sell Sisera into the hand of a 
woman.” 



















s, 
























































MIRIAM AND DEBORAH. 


193 


Even this prophecy and reproach did not alter Barak’s resolu- 
tion. He probably reasoned that as her prophetic gift was so 
well known, her presence in the army would be a pledge of 
victory. Zebulun and Naphtali were much more likely to come 
at his summons, if their beloved Judge were with him. 

As he in no wise abated his demand, “ Deborah arose, and went 
with Barak to Kedesh.” 

“And Barak called Zebulun, and Naphtali to Kedesh ; and he 
went up with ten thousand men at his feet ; and Deborah went 
up with him.” 

There were men enough in Israel to judge the people and 
exhort Barak ; there were warriors, priests, legists, and the princes 
of Judah; but God called this woman to stand in the breach, to 
destroy Jabin, free the tribes, and judge them. She had such 
inspiration and fitting for her office as Gideon and other judges. 
We see her grandly suited to her position ; she is never in ad- 
vance of demand ; never behind it ; she keeps majestic pace with 
necessity. 

When the hosts of the Canaanites and Hebrews were arrayed 
against each other, Deborah gave the signal of battle, saying to 
Barak: “Up! for this is the day in which the Lord hath de- 
livered Sisera into thine hand ; is not the Lord gone out before 
thee ? ” 

It was a glorious announcement ; it nerved the arm of Barak, 
and thrilled every one of the ten thousand hearts in his camp. 
They rushed forth assured of victory. “ The Lord discomfited 
Sisera.” The very stars in their courses fought for Israel. The 
soul of Barak rose to meet the hour; the clash of the battle 
electrified him ; he pursued the flying host of the enemy unto 
Harosheth, dealing death, and foes fell before him like leaves cut 
off by the frosts. “And all the hosts of Sisera fell by the edge 
6f the sword ; and there was not a man left.” Those six hundred 
13 


194 


MIRIAM AND DEBORAH. 


chariots of iron were abandoned on the field ; wildly dashed the 
horses, their leaders lost, and the tumult of the strife in their ears. 
Kishon, rolling seaward, carried swollen corpses, spears, shields, 
and flung up warlike equipments upon its banks. 

Among the multitude of the dead, the Hebrew soldiers sought 
for the hated body of Jabin’s general. Barak knew well that the 
prediction would be verified; that no warrior’s sword or spear 
would be found to have cut down Sisera ; in some retreat he had 
surely been slain, by the hand of a woman. 

So it was. Heber, the Kenite, a descendant of Jethro, the 
father-in-law of Moses, a princely nomad, was living in his tents, 
at peace with Jabin. Heber had his dwelling in Zaanaim, “the 
oaks of the wanderers.” In the heart of Jael, this Bedouin’s wife, 
glowed a friendship for the people of God. When she saw their 
oppressor lying asleep in her tent, the cries of women and chil- 
dren wailing for fathers and sons whom he had slain, seemed to 
fill her ears. This was the man who had seized Hebrew maidens 
to crowd his harem ; here was he who had reaped the fields he 
never sowed; the proud idolater, who had contemned that One 
God whom Moses wrote of, and whom - Jethro served. Her soul 
burned to revenge the sorrows of the kindred people. 

A moment, the nail and hammer did their work, and Sisera 
passed out of sleep to sleep’s twin brother — death, and lay all 
lifeless at Jael’s feet. 

A daring deed ! The enemy of Israel was slain ! 

And yet, as the next chapter closes, with that Canaanite mother’s 
watching for her stately son ; as one moment her material pride 
swells high, and next her fears prevail, and we think of the white 
corpse on which Barak gazes in Heber’s tent, and know this 
mother’s heart must sicken 'and perish in its hope deferred, we pity 
her. She is a woman who has leaned from her lattice, with her 
wise ladies about her, and for more than three thousand years has 
challenged and received the sympathy of a world ! 


MIRIAM AND DEBORAH. 


195 


The day of slaughter closed with song. Deborah and Barak 
meeting when the oppressor was vanquished, and their people were 
made free, burst forth into the praise of God. Instead of self- 
gratulation there was worship. “ Praise ye the Lord ! ”* u I will 
sing praise to the God of Israel.” This began the paean, and when 
the glowing numbers ceased, they ceased in praise. “ So let all 
thine enemies perish, O Lord; but let them that love him be as 
the sun, when he goeth forth in his might.” 

After this deliverance “ the land had rest forty years.” The 
passing of each Hebrew generation seemed to mark a new lapse 
into idolatry. 

Behold this Deborah! her piety, her discretion, her wisdom, her 
patriotism, are an inheritance for a world. 

She grew up at her birthplace ; there she married ; there when 
called to lofty station she still abode; and Israel went up to her 
for judgment. Her high position and mighty deeds did not unsex 
her ; she was not a king, but a mother in Israel . The trouble- 
tossed, worn, grieving, penitent people, needed a mother , and that 
mother was Deborah. She sang them songs of salvation and of 
patriotism comforting them. Hers was no feeble lullaby ; she sang 
gloriously as David, Isaiah and Habakkuk. That swelling 
triumphal ode seals her a prophet. 

The history of Deborah, of her prophesying, judging and warring, 
shows us that in the thought of God there is no unfitness in wo- 
man’s undertaking those toils, and filling those positions, if need 
be, which more ordinarily belong to men. There are times when 
a woman can do a man’s work more nobly and fitly than he can 
do it himself. When that time has come let her do the work as 
God has called her. And we shall see that the women thus needed 
and thus employed are not the women who have been loudly vaunt- 
ing their fitness and demanding opportunity ; but those who with 
souls intent on duty, rather than renown,, have given -their hearts 


196 


MIRIAM AND DEBORAH. 


to each toil as it found them ; and having been faithful in least 
were found to be equally faithful in much. 

Since before wbmen under Divine government lie these possi- 
bilities, we work in the line of the Divine intent when women are 
educated, as men are educated, in the ratio of their capacity. The 
capacity of women for learning is, on the whole, the same as that 
of men. More than half of each sex is unequal to a liberal educa- 
tion. Given unlimited opportunities, each growing mind will by 
natural selection receive that for which it is best suited, and which 
will in the end be found to be a proper furnishing for the 
exigencies of its future. 

Not every Paduan maiden could have become professor of six 
languages in the university, as did Elena Cornaro ; and, as was 
proven by the fact, not every Paduan lad ; for she found none to 
compete with her. 

Fenelon taught that feminine purity was as incompatible with 
learning as with vice. God being the great fountain of knowledge, 
we do not presume that he has ever fashioned a creature so holy 
as to be defiled by wisdom. 

Dr. Channing is horror struck at woman’s meddling with theo- 
logy. The excellent divine would not have had Miriam pro- 
phesy ; Deborah deliver the oracles of God; or Priscilla be one of 
the professors of theology, of whom Apollos the eloquent learned. 
The good doctor is not the only man who has been wiser than 
God. 

There has been much prating about woman’s intuition and in- 
stinct , and her weakness being her strength. Woman’s weakness 
is not her strengh ; for her as for man knowledge is power. Intui- 
tion is no more the peer of education than the dog’s instinct is the 
equal of his master’s knowledge. Instinct and intuition are well 
enough when they are all that can be had — and no longer. 

Given a sound religious, moral, and mental training, and we 


MIRIAM AND DEBORAH. 


197 


think other problems will work themselves out — when it is time. 
It took many years to teach men that there is a better implement 
than the sword ; and that woman could manage anything beyond 
her spinning wheel ; and the lesson in either case is yet far from 
well learned. s 

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom. The 
Creator bestows this on women as he does on men. He demands 
of each the best exercise of the talents, whether few or many, 
which he has bestowed. In proportion as the soul and brain are 
educated, women will appreciate the dignity and extent of what 
is evidently their first sphere, the sphere of home. When they 
go beyond this, it will be because their honie work demands less 
than their capacity ; because outside work calls for the surplus 
power ; because they are equal to the new demand made upon 
them. 

In considering this “ woman question ” most people ignore the 
fact that marriage is the God-implanted instinct of the race. The 
majority of men and women will marry. Unconquerable nature 
will then set the claims of husband, children, home life first in the 
heart of every educated and godly woman. Therefore, there need 
be no more masculine trepidation lest women usurp the pulpit and 
the gubernatorial chair, the general’s star, and the sea captain’s 
floating kingdom, because wifehood and motherhood will interpose 
their mysterious ban. There may be no legal disability, but there 
will be in general the natural disability and disinclination. When 
there is an exception, it will be so fitting and so necessary that, as 
in the case of Deborah, Miriam and Huldah the prophetess, no one 
will wish to condemn. For any body of men to legislate against 
the entrance of woman into any honest sphere, we hold to be action 
running before the face and will of God, which will be forced to 
run back again. 

Woman shines fitly in her home, as shines a jewel in a ring ; 


198 


MIRIAM AND DEBORAH. 


but, as says John Quincy Adams : “ Women are not only justified, 
but exhibit the most exalted virtue, when they do depart from 
the domestic circle, and enter on the concerns of their country, 
of humanity, and of their God.” For the first specification, we 
see a bright array of those who have been warriors, rulers, martyr- 
patriots. We admit the vast incompatibility between woman- 
hood and war ; that, however, is an argument against war and not 
against the sex. We see an incompatibility between God’s minis- 
ters and war ; between all good men and war. Leaving home, 
women have blessed the earth, as nurses and teachers — as mis- 
sionaries, and the sustainers and pioneers of missions. 

“ Times change, and we change with them.” The nineteenth 
century has demanded more of and for women than any precedent. 
The next century may do more, but loud outcry, and wild de- 
mands for that, for which the fulness of time has not come, will 
not hasten the years, slipping like sands from the hand of the 
Creator. 

The status of woman under the Divine Government is a mental 
and spiritual equality with man. Add to this piety, and only 
in those exceptional cases where there is a clear need and call will 
woman trench on the office work of man. 

The honorable women of the centuries, whose names are written 
in light, have not been those who clamored for great honors in 
public places, but who, doing whatsoever their hands found to do, 
grew into fame without intending it. If there is a loftier good, 
a higher sphere for woman, she will reach it by showing herself 
equal to all the emergencies of the present. 

If the day comes when the affairs of State government, diplo- 
macy, and politics need her guidance, she will find herself stand- 
ing quietly at her post, lifted there because she was needed . 

In such need, while manhood ignores the sentimentalism of a 
Dunois, it will possess the unselfish recognition and reverence of 


MIRIAM AND DEBORAH. 


199 


Barak, for one whom God has animated and moulded for the 
occasion. 

"If Barak had believed like Deborah, he would have been 
as near to God as she was,” says Lange. Faith was the measure 
of valor. Not legions, but prophets, guard the kingdom of our 
God. God has called his prophets from either sex as it pleased 
him ; but in the main the duties of the prophetic office have been 
suited rather to the physique of the man than the woman. 

When all men and women have faith, when all are Christians, 
then all fear of mutual aggression and oppression will be done 
away. The scriptural assertion of the unity of their flesh is the 
assertion of their equality ; to claim equality is not to deny a dif- 
ference. In religion only these two find their true oneness, their 
highest destiny : 

“ As Heaven’s high twins, whereof in Tyrian blue 
The one revolveth : through his course immense 

Might love his brother of the damask hue, 

For like, and difference. 

For different pathways evermore decreed 
To intersect, but not to interfere ; 

For common goal, two aspects, and one speed, 

One centre and one year.” 


IX. 


A CHAN. 

THE SINNER IN THE CHURCH. 


N the annals of the Church of God the same elements have 
entered into every dispensation. The history of the 
Church militant is a unit. Those phases of character ; 
those diverse elements ; those rhapsodies, and declensions ; 
those warm-hearted labors, and strange apathies, which wake our 
wonderment now, puzzled Shem ; preyed on the soul of Methu- 
selah ; astonished Abraham ; and discouraged Moses, until he 
cried, “ Kill me now, I pray thee, out of hand, if I have found 
favor in thy sight, and let me not see my wretchedness.” 

Christians now-a-days feel religion disgraced, and sinners tri- 
umph to see so many in the Church, who are evidently not of it. 
It is common to hear people remarking that though this is pain- 
ful, it is nothing new — “ Judas was one of the twelve.” Judas 
was only a central figure in a long line of “ fair and flourishing 
professors ” who have proven themselves false. There were many, 
beginning with Cain, before Judas; there have been many since. 
Christ has plainly declared that thus it shall be until the world 
ends, and the angel reapers go forth : “ Let them both grow 

together until the harvest.” 

Such a vast concourse of evil doers have doubtless exhibited 
the hardness of the unregenerate heart, in every imaginable form 

of sin ; but after all, ninety-nine hundredths of the false professors 
200 



ACJIAN. 


201 


show their spiritual idiosyncrasies in one and the same form — 
covetousness. 

If a member of any evangelical church breaks the third, sixth, 
seventh, or eighth commandment, he is pretty certain to be ex- 
scinded at once. If he trespasses on the fourth, fifth, or ninth 
sections of the moral law, let us hope that he is invariably re- 
proved and exhorted. But we must aver that cases where any 
exception is taken to the infringing of the tenth commandment by 
“ church members in good standing,” are so few and far between, 
that none seem to be on record. This is, when well considered, 
the more singular, since he who breaks the law against coveting, 
evidently has at the same time broken those most solemn statutes : 
“ Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” “ Thou shalt not 
bow down to them nor serve them.” We see that a covetous 
Christian should be an impossibility; alas, he is hardly an 
anomaly. 

Before the Christian’s eye should be ever, as in the legend, the 
crucified Christ, saying: “All this for thee; what hast thou 
done for me? ” 

If it is possible for the saved soul entering the better world, 
to feel wonder-struck and bitterly repentant for his past, it will be 
in proportion, we think, to the amount of his covetousness. The 
covetous Christian is, like covetous Lot, saved so as by fire. 

In nearly every church there is to be found a very lofty, self- 
assuming and thoroughly self-satisfied individual, whom the Lord 
has never converted ; and whose covetousness and self-content 
keep equal pace one with another. 

In studying Biblical characters, we have come now to Achan, 
a man of this type, and shall, for a little time dwell upon the 
individual, his influence, and his destiny. There had been men 
of his stamp before him. Milton goes still farther back, and tells 
us of a covetous spirit among the rebelling angels : 


202 


achan. 


“Mammon led them on ; 

Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell 

From Heaven ; for e’en in Heaven his looks and thoughts 

Were always downward bent, admiring more 

The riches of Heaven’s pavement, trodden gold, 

Than aught divine or holy, else enjoyed 
In vision beatific.” 

The name Achan is more properly, as Josephus has it, Achar 
— a troubler. He was the fourth generation from Judah; a 
prince of a princely house. 

The city of Jericho was given to Israel by the direct interposi- 
tion of God. The people marched around it to the sound of their 
sacred music; and when the ordained signal was given, the 
mighty wall fell inwards with a great crash, and all that each 
Hebrew had to do was to go up straight before him, to seize the 
captives and the spoil. The city of Jericho was especially 
accursed ; it had, like Sodom, sinned exceedingly, and was to be 
left a monument of the destroying wrath of God upon high- 
handed idolatry. Therefore, before its mighty bulwarks withered 
and fell beneath the touch of God’s finger, Joshua had strictly 
commanded the people, saying: “And ye in any wise keep your- 
selves from the accursed thing, lest ye make yourselves accursed, 
when ye take the accursed thing, and make the camp of Israel a 
curse, and trouble it. But all the silver and gold, and vessels of 
brass and iron, are consecrated to the Lord : they shall come into 
the treasury of the Lord.” 

This was an exceedingly plain, impressive warning. We must 
remember that it came immediately after the miraculous passage 
of the Jordan ; the solemn celebration of the passover at Gilgal ; 
the new circumcision of the people ; the ceasing of the manna, 
the angel’s food which had nourished them for forty years ; and 
the appearance of the Covenant Angel, Captain of the Hosts of 
God. 

We see the tremendous impression made on the minds of the 


ACH AN. 


203 


Israelites by these events, and by the prohibition delivered to 
them, in the fact that among all those millions there was found 
but one man who dared to disobey. Indeed, we feel it a matter 
oi amazement that even one should have ventured so much, when 
to reach his forbidden -prize he must pass over those strangely 
smitten walls, beholding the destruction God dealt to his foes, and 
seeing how, when his reckoning time comes, he requireth all the 
past. 

Achan was an honorable man, of a most honorable family ; he 
was doubtless highly respected by the people, and had no little 
esteem for himself; when the royal banners of Judah -led the 
advancing host of Israel, he went with them, feeling himself a 
credit to his nation. 

He had nourished a great vice in his bosom. A man, in 
a sudden burst of passion, may be betrayed into a sin, of 
which he has never dreamed ; but selfishness is a plant of slow 
growth ; it only, by culture, attains strength ; it is not like 
Jonah’s gourd, a thing to grow up in one night, and wither in 
another. 

The whole manner of Achan’s crime showed that covetousness 
was a habit with him. He was so secret, so wary, so presistent, 
so utterly obstinate about his deed. 

As he went up, sword in hand, over the prostrate wall, he came 
to the dwelling of a great man of Jericho, perhaps even to the 
palace of the king. The greedy eye of Achan was alert for 
plunder. He had not laid it to heart that Jericho was accursed, 
and all its gold and silver were consecrated to the Lord, and were 
to be brought into the sanctuary, purged by fire, and converted to 
sacred use. 

The wealth of Jericho was the gain of vice and oppression. 
Its - treasures were sacred to Baal and Ashtaroth : now the wrath 
of man was to redound to the glory of the God of Heaven, and 


204 


ACHAN. 


the spoils of the idols were to decorate the sanctuary of the King 
of kings. 

Looking eagerly about him, keeping guard neither over his 
eyes nor the lusts of his heart, Achan saw a noble trophy. Be- 
fore him lay a right royal robe, a Babylonish garment. Even 
when he is about to die for its sake, it is so precious in his eyes 
that, with a miser’s relish, he calls it " a goodly Babylonish gar- 
ment.” "It was,” says Josephus, "woven entirely of gold, fit 
for a king.” Near this garment were two hundred shekels of 
silver, probably in some wrought purse or bag, and a wedge of 
gold, in weight fifty shekels. 

Achan at once desired these for his own possession ; he did not 
consider how worthily they would grace the Tabernacle ; he did 
not remember that they were already the Lord’s, and that the eye 
of their Owner was fixed on him. 

" Will a man rob God ? But ye have robbed me, saith the 
Lord of Hosts.” 

We see that Achan was a true miser, one who loved treasure 
for its own sake, not on account of what he could do with it. 
There is a vast difference between these two classes. . The world 
unites in execrating men who get gold to gloat over it in secret ; 
to cherish it, and cling to it, and love it like a human thing. 

Others gather money with equal avidity, but they get it as the 
means of amassing treasures of art and literature; of securing 
education, and lavishing beautiful gifts on their families and 
friends. If they add to this, that as they get they give; that 
their money is a fountain whence flow a hundred rills of blessing 
to the needy, and which make the waste places of the Church 
bloom like the rose, then men rejoice in their success, as the 
securing of a positive good. 

Achan loved the golden garment, the silver shekels, and the 
shining wedge, for themselves. He at once appropriated them 


ACHAN. 


205 


to his own use, and made all speed to his tent to hide them. 
His family, as we learn from the sequel, were like-minded with 
himself. They shared his doom ; and, as God is just, it is evident 
that they shared his crime. A trench was dug in the earth under 
the tent of Achan, and there they hid away God’s property, the 
consecrated firstfruits of the spoils of Canaan. 

Achan had plenty of time to deliberate, to repent, to make 
restitution, but he had no idea of doing either ; he gloated over 
•his booty. 

Before long he began by see the effect of his sin, for his people 
were smitten at Ai ; and instead of coming again in triumph, the 
defeated army returned, rending the air with their cries, and 
bringing the dead bodies of thirty-six warriors. 

Shame and confusion of face were Israel’s portion. In thirty- 
six tents the wailing women took up the lamentations for the 
dead. The “ hearts of all the people melted, and became as 
water.” 

Joshua, with torn garments and dishevelled locks, lay weeping 
on his face before the Ark of God. 

The seventy elders of Israel put dust on their reverend heads, 
and refused to be comforted. 

Achan knew why this blow had fallen : he saw the chiefs of 
his own tribe, Nahshon and Zabdi, lamenting thus before offended 
God, and he knew well that the root of all this bitterness was 
golden, and planted in the earth in the midst of his tent. Still 
he did not repent. It was open to him to confess and to restore ; 
but no, he valued his treasure more than the lives and happiness 
of his people, more even than the fate of his nation. 

His sin cannot be hidden, and God becomes his Accuser. The 
meaning of the disaster is made plain, there is a sinner in 
Israel. The inexorable lot pointed its ghostly finger directly to 
the culprit. 


206 


ACHAN. 


Aelian stood confronted with his wronged, indignant people; 
before his grieved, astonished leader ; before the tabernacle of his 
outraged God. 

Not till then; not until vengeance had taken him by the throat, 
and cried, “ Thou art the man,” did he confess ; then, driven to 
the wall, he made a statement of fact. 

Suddenly the hidden garment, the gold and the silver, gave 
tongue against him ; when the trench was opened, the trembling 
messengers beheld the fatal ingot, the shining of the folded 
cloth of gold, and under all the silver shekels. They brought 
them forth, laying them as silent accusers before the Lord. 

That is a solemn scene in the doleful valley, thence called 
Achor. Achan, his family, his tent, his goods, his flocks and 
herds all make one mighty funeral pyre. 

Joshua says to the culprit: “Why hast thou troubled us? 
The Lord shall trouble thee, this day.” 

Doubtless as Achan looked upon the fruits of his crime, when 
he saw garment, wedge and shekels, they seemed a strange thing 
to die for. 

“ They stoned them with stones.” Thus Israel cleared them- 
selves of all complicity in the iniquity. They burned them with 
fire, emblem of the fierceness of that anger which had gone out 
against Jacob. Then they raised over them a great pile of 
stones — a memorial of the sin, and punishment of covetousness. 
“ Wherefore the name of that place was called Achor,” that is — 
trouble. 

This is the brief and bitter history of the man. His epitaph is 
written in the Book of Chrorficles. “Achar — the troubler of 
Israel.” Thus is he set on the page of history forever. 

The baleful influence of the man is to be noted. His sin had 
impregnated his whole family. If there is a sin which is heredi- 
tary in its essence, we think that sin is covetousness. In this the 


ACHAN. 


207 


son is very apt to be like his father* Close, narrow dealings, 
neglect of charities, the withholding of the Lord’s tithes, are traits 
handed down too often from one generation to another. Hardness 
of the fist is more apt to be perpetuated as a mental than a 
physical characteristic. 

Not only did Achan ruin the moral character of his household, 
but he was the cause of their violent destruction. Beyond this he 
was the troubler of his whole nation. He brought military dis- 
grace upon Israel, and made them the mock of the heathen. He 
was the real murderer of thirty-six valiant men ; and widows and 
orphans whom he had made, come near to behold his doom. 

The influence of the covetous man poisons society. This cove- 
tousness it is which makes envies and heartburnings in families; 
foments a hatred of the poor against the rich, and awakes the scorn 
of sharp-witted worldlings, who see the vast incongruity between 
some' church members’ profession and practices. There is full 
many a man who prays missionary Avho will not give missionary. 

The destiny of Achan was temporal and eternal infamy. Such 
destiny lies before any one who goes regularly to church every 
Sunday, and considers of the state of his finances, while in all ap- 
parent rectitude he is waiting for the elements to be passed at the 
communion. Such an one readily partakes of the bread and 
wine and fails to see the contribution plate at the close of the 
service ! 

We would that Achans were as scarce in the modern church as 
they were in Israel at the sack of Jericho. People seeing a church 
in difficulty, in a cold, dead, unhappy state, are apt to say : “ Alas, 
there is a Jonah there ! ” If they should say an Achan, they would 
come much nearer the mark. The Jonahs are the fearing Chris- 
tians, the Achans are the covetous professors , and they are by far 
the more numerous. 

It sometimes seems that if we should sift out of the church all 


208 


AC II AN. 


the Lots, and all the Achans, there would be hardly anybody left, 
so has this sin of covetousness grown among us. Troublers of 
God’s Israel, they sit in their places, and the arm of the Lord is 
stayed. The helper of Israel will not reveal himself. The cause 
of Christ languishes ; devout souls cry like Joshua : “ Ah, Lord, 
what shall I say when Israel turneth their backs before their 
enemies ! ” 

The answer of the Lord is now as then : “ Get thee up ; where- 
fore best thou upon thy face ? Israel hath sinned ... for they have 
even taken of the accursed thing . . . and they have stolen and dis- 
sembled also.” 

Covetousness is no doubt the crying evil of our time. With in- 
crease of means have come increase of luxuries, and the more men 
have the more men crave. Very good people who desire the pros- 
perity of the Church, and the' glorious return of their Christ, must, 
like Israel in the day of Amos, be at ease in Zion ; must live luxu- 
riously, and feast and sing and be jubilant, until there is little left 
for the Lord’s cause. 

In these days the whole world is open to the entrance of gospel 
light; opportunities abound; there is a cry for help going up from 
all the dark places ; if it were not for covetousness, there would be 
men and means in jftmndance, and suddenly from the open win- 
dows of heaven should rain down spiritual plenty; blessings 
making rich all the earth with true riches. The trouble is, men 
are too covetous to hasten the second advent of their Beloved. 

The increase of this horrible vice of covetousness may possibly 
be owing to a laxity of church government. If this sin like 
others, considered more flagrant, but truly not so deadly, were a 
matter of church discipline, a very great improvement might take 
place. People would be led to examine themselves, to try their 
spiritual temper, and see if they really loved money more than 
the name of Jesus. 


ACHAN. 


209 


To us has come in Holy Writ the prohibition of covetousness, 
just as clearly as came to Achan the forbidding to touch the spoils 
of Jericho. “ Abhor covetousness.” “Let it not be so much as 
named among you.” “ Covetousness which is idolatry.” We 
have held up before us the terrible fate of Achan, of Demas, of 
Ananias and Sapphira, and yet — O strange perversity of our 
hearts !— we covet still. 

The warning comes to the covetous man as to Achan. He goes 
on and sins like Achan, he robs God. He sees the disastrous 
effects, the sneers of the world, the grief of holy souls, the hinder- 
ance of gospel work, the perversion of his own family, as Achan 
saw it. He is obstinate and clings to his greed as Achan clung. 
Then in the midst of his sin, or perchance after a long success in 
it, at the hour of death, the Lord becomes his accuser, and he meets 
the doom of Achan. 

Beggared and hopeless, the soul reaches eternity, and stands a 
stranger at the gate of a city where no friends or kindred in spirit 
are dwelling ; where none know the comer’s name ; where no surety 
has been bespoken, no advocate retained to plead its cause, no 
treasure sent before, no mansion prepared. The glorious accents 
of that far-off land are all unknown to the tongue that has 
hitherto only made the bargains and counted the gains of that dim 
planet Earth, which now has faded out of sight. 

There is, to be sure, remaining a name on the church rolls ; the 
modern Achan has removed to a land where they do not receive 
“ church letters of dismission ” from this lower sphere, but where 
they have a divine test beyond all the crucial skill of the church 
on earth. 

Would it do any good to bury Achan with a placard on his 
breast, that when the resurrection angel comes he may know this 
dust and ashes once professed to be a Christian ? Alas, no ! 
Achan’s hour for repenting and doing better has passed by. When 
14 


l 


210 


ACHAN. 


he comes forth in his grave clothes it will do no good to profess : 
“ Lord, we have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast 
taught in our streets.” 

Who can abide hearing that reply freighted with doom ? “ I 
tell you, I know not whence you are ; depart from me, all ye workers 
of iniquity.” 

From the history of Achan let us take this lesson home : flee 
covetousness, which is idolatry; for ye cannot serve God and 
Mammon. And ours is a God which searcheth the reins and trieth 
the heart, and will accept nothing less than entire consecration to 
himself. 


X. 


SAMSON, 

A SAINT OF IRON AND CLAY. 


N the world of Nature and Providence we frequently 
admire seeing a need met by an exactly suitable supply. 
We note effects, and superficially wonder how they arose, 
and whence came their nice fitness to an emergency; 
their causes may be deep as the glowing centre of the earth, or 
dwell high up among the stars. 

In the records of Scripture we are shown the cause lying far 
back of the effect ; we see God through successive years preparing 
for the exigencies of his children. This long preparation is no- 
where more prominently developed than in the book of J udges. 

If ever there was a people stiff-necked and rebellious and 
besottedly set against learning anything by experience, it was the 
people of Israel. God had selected them to show forth in their 
history, and beyond all controversy through time and eternity, the 
magnificence of the riches of his mercy, and the abundance of his 
long suffering. We doubt if ever sons of Moab or Ammon or 
Canaan could have made more tremendous drafts on the Divine 
patienoe, or tempted more presumptuously Almighty wrath, than 
did the descendants of favored Shem and faithful Abraham. 

" These be thy gods, O Israel ! ” had been the cry at the foot 

of Sinai, which had sounded the death-knell of three thousand 

men. The smoke of the sacrifices to Baalpeor had proved the 

211 



212 


SAMSON. 


funereal pall of four and twenty thousand of the wayward and 
chosen race. Yet in spite of such experiences, with the thunder 
of Horeb and the curses of Ebal ringing in their ears, Israel still 
followed after strange gods. For such high treason against 
Heaven, the bitterness of bondage had been decreed by a law, of 
whose immutability the unaltering statutes of the Medes and 
Persians were only the faintest shadow. God foresaw after the 
chastisement the deep repentance, and then the swift smile of his 
forgiveness, and through long trains of years he again and again 
prepared the men who were to be his right hand in working sal- 
vation for his people. 

Even before Israel corrupted themselves with those Moabitish 
idolatries which sold them into the hand of Eglon for eighteen 
years, the wife of Gera, a left-handed Benjamite, nursed on her 
bosom the ordained deliverer of her nation, and the unconscious 
earth yielded the metal that made his two-edged dagger. 

When Israel cried mightily unto God because of Midian, that 
arm had already grown strong in beating out wheat, which should 
sweep away the oppressing Amalekites, like the chaff of summer 
threshing floors. 

“We have sinned,” wailed the loved and wayward nation, 
smarting under the hand of the Zidonians. Then the soul of the 
Lord “ was grieved for the misery of Israel,” and lo, he who had 
been driven out of his father’s house, and inured to all hardships 
and trials as a harlot’s son, was ready to grind Zidon and the 
Maonites like dust beneath his heel, and sit a strong judge over 
the desolated and trembling tribes. 

“ And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the 
Lord ; and the Lord delivered them into the hands of the Philis- 
tines forty years.” But God foreknew that at the end of the forty 
years, Israel would humble themselves with deep self-accusations 
before his righteous throne — would be forgiven — would need an 


SAMSON. 


213 


avenger to stand up for them ; and while this repentance was yet 
unstirred in the hearts of these sinners, the King of kings fashioned 
for himself the man who as a sharp sword should divide asunder 
the strength of Philistia, and smite to the earth the pride of the 
heathen. 

As has often happened, to especially mark the Divine interfer- 
ence, the coming deliverer was to be the child of one long barren 
among women — Manoah’s wife. 

Manoah was of the tribe of Dan, and dwelt in Zorah, a part 
of the inheritance which had fallen to that tribe, when the land 
of Canaan was divided by lot among its new possessors. Dan 
was the fifth son of Jacob, borne by Bilhah, and receiving from 
Rachel the name of Dan, or judging. We find Dan prophetically 
described by Jacob, and by Moses, as a judge, a serpent, an adder, 
and a lion’s whelp. A little later than the time of Manoah and 
his son, we find the Danites, a band of marauders, knowing no 
law but their own power. 

Dan in Manoah’s day was as deeply imbued with idolatry as any 
of the tribes of Israel, but through all the nation were scattered 
families who lived in the fear of the Lord, and maintained the 
pure worship of him who had led his people through wilderness 
and sea by fire and cloud. 

“ Among the faithless faithful only found ” were these two, who 
doubtless lamented together the sin and sorrow of their people. 
The home was lonely without the faces and voices of young chil- 
dren ; there had been a promise left long ago of Jehovah, a God 
clad in flesh, and this daughter of Dan had had her longings for 
a maternity that should make her most happy among women. 
Her hope had never had fruition ; her husband tilled the field, she 
toiled in the house alone. So as she toiled, musing perhaps on 
happiness that might have been, there came to her the Angel of 
the Lord — the Jehovah of the old dispensation — the Jesus of the 


214 


SAMSON. 


new. She knew him not, his name was secret ; the Israelitish 
woman had not reached to the grandeur of the revelation that the 
Ransom of the race, he who should hereafter lie, divinity and dust, 
on a Jewish mother’s knee, was here on an errand of mercy to his 
beloved nation, now as ever the shepherd and care-taker of his 
wandering flock. Manoah’s wife beheld this stranger differing 
from all men that ever she had seen, a man of God, his countenance 
very terrible, even with its splendors softened to meet her feeble 
sight, bearing impress of the skies. 

In the brief and magic touches of sacred writ we have a very 
clear picture of Manoah and his wife, and the chief traits of their 
character. 

Faith shone in them like a star : “ A man of God came to me, 
but I asked not whence he was,” says the wife, and her husband 
prays, “ Let the man whom thou didst send come again unto us.” 

Then the angel returns, and the grace of humility clothes this 
pair: “How shall we order the child, and what shall we do unto 
him?” 

Holy reverence is like a crown to them ; they made an offer- 
ing, fell on their faces, and worshipped. 

Then the man’s fears awoke: “We shall surely die, because we 
have seen God.” 

Then the Avife’s grand common sense shone out : “ If the Lord 
were pleased to kill us, he Avould not have received a burnt-offering 
and a meat-offering at our hands ; neither would he have shewed 
us all these things, nor would, as at this time, have told us such 
things as these.” 

A splendid piece of logic this. They Avere decreed to be the 
parents and tutors of one Avho should deliver Israel from the hand 
of the Philistines. The dead could not bear nor bring up chil- 
dren ; so it Avas evident that their lot Avas to live even after that 
wonderful vision of God. 


SAMSON. 


215 


When we follow the history of the strong man of Dan, we can- 
not but wish he had inherited this sturdy sense, this reasoning 
force of the mother, who comes before us with no name but “ Ma- 
noah’s wife.” 

So Samson was born ; child of such promises that it needed no 
infant exhibition of strength to indicate his future. 

William the Conqueror grasped a handful of straws with such 
unyielding tenacity that his nurse foretold that he should grasp 
and hold kingdoms ; but these Danites needed no sign to show to 
them in their boy the scourge of Philistia, for they had the word 
of the Angel of the Covenant. 

Now, as her son grew daily in the “ camp of Dan, between 
Zorah and Eshtaol,” a glad young Nazarite before the Lord, 
Manoah’s wife was prouder and happier than ever the “ Berecyn- 
thian mother in her turreted chariot, joyful in a race of heroes;” 
her hero’s course should wax brighter and grander, like the sun, 
and shine over the world in the glory of his faith forever. 

Yet, if we can predicate anything of Samson’s boyhood from the 
record of his manhood, the lad must have exhibited discrepancies 
of character sufficient to appal the stoutest mother-heart that ever 
beat. No man that has been held up before men in the clear 
light of history presents more glaring inconsistencies than Samson. 
He was weak just in proportion as he was strong ; his humanity 
was of the feeblest, and the grace that was in him, that throbbed 
in his mighty veins, and knit his sinews like bands of steel, was 
strong as an archangel’s ; there was no limit to his strength but 
the limit set by his own irresolution. He who was to send the 
story of his prowess singing down the centuries like an arrow from 
a prodigious bow, was to send also the story of his folly and his 
shame. 

It is the old tale, so often repeated, of energies running to waste 
and power misapplied, and a lofty mission trailing its banners in 


216 


SAMSON. 


the mire. God gave this man a destiny, to the grandeur of which 
he never fully rose. The reservoir of his strength was in the 
Almighty, and no demand on power would have exhausted his 
supply. We cannot calculate the grandeur of the deliverance he 
might have wrought for his people had he fixed his unflinching 
gaze in high patriotism on his country’s greatest good. As it was, 
he made great spirts of strength and courage, and then lay back 
on his oars, conscious of, reserve force ready whenever he chose to 
exert it. 

Whatever religion Samson had was of the intensely muscular 
variety. These are the days when the gospel of muscularity has 
everywhere had its apostles and adherents. Beginning in a wise 
appreciation of the fact that spirit itself may be ennobled if its 
home of clay is fair and comfortable, desiring simply mens sana in 
sano corpore, this wish has outgrown its legitimate limits, and men 
have developed body at the expense of brain, have seemed to seek 
only to make of a reasonable being — a magnificent brute. Men 
seem to be reverting to the old days when nations flocked to watch 
the athletes struggling and racing in the public games. We cross 
continents and traverse seas, and devote days to see men making 
so many motions per second, and being bet on like the fast horses 
of the turf. It is being questioned whether this extreme develop- 
ment of the physical does not destroy the balance of a perfect man- 
hood, does not deteriorate mind and conscience, and put man down 
to the level of some splendid beast that he emulates. Not that 
we would depreciate physical strength ; it is a glorious gift ; but 
mind should still be master over matter, and he who develops 
bodily prowess should still see to it that reason is lord over all. 

“ But what is strength without a double share 
Of wisdom ? Vast, unwieldy, burdensome, 

Proudly secure, yet liable to fall.” 

The boy of Zorah grew apace, mocking at that which made 


SAMSON. 


217 


other men weary ; finding men and brutes and all the strong things 
of this world toys in his grasp of power. He was of a buoyant 
spirit, fond of frolic and of practical jokes doubtless. He who told 
riddles and tied firebrands to foxes’ tails in maturer life, probably 
kept “ Mahaneh-Dan ” on the qui vive as to what he might do next. 
We may imagine Manoah rejoicing greatly in the youngster’s 
hardihood, while the mother, amazed, perceived that the future 
deliverer loved his own pleasure in the same proportion as he 
hated the oppressors of his people ; that he was nothing loath to 
do evil on excuse of good to come; and that to persistent be- 
guilings the easy spirit in a giant frame could not say No! 

That subtle thing spirit is moulded by nature and by circum- 
stance ; we are to a great extent the product of our surroundings ; 
the sons of the hill countries have been ever brave and hardy. 
The poet sings : 

“ For the strength of the hills we bless thee, 

Our God, our fathers’ God ; 

Thou hast made thy children mighty, 

By the touch of the mountain sod.” 

The tribe of Dan had received in the great plains of S 'hefelah 
and Sharon one of the most fertile portions of Palestine, but the 
Amorites contending for their olden possession, “ forced the children 
of Dan up into the mountains.” It is thus that we read that 
Samson goes down to Timnath with its vineyards, and to the placid 
valley of Sorek, and that he goes up to his father’s house. We 
are also expressly told that he had his dwelling between Zorah 
and Eshtaol, at Mahaneh-Dan, that is, at the fortified camp of 
his warlike people. We may judge something of these warrior 
companions of Samson’s youth from what we read a little farther 
on in the history, when the camp of Dan furnished six hundred 
men appointed with weapons of war ; the record is very emphatic 
about these armed and trained soldiers. Not only this, but they 


218 


SAMSON. 


were as arrant freebooters as ever existed ; bold, sagacious, grimly 
humorous ; wanting more room for themselves they spread 
abroad over the land, with admirable coolness, to select what best 
pleased them. Laish, a fair city, dwelt secure, and they captured 
the place with fire and sword, and built their own homes over the 
corpses of the slain ; not only this, but they stole a priest and all 
the paraphernalia of worship, like the pious bandit who fasts on 
Friday and murders the passing traveller. When Micah goes 
after them, crying, heart-broken, — “ What aileth thee ? ” amiably 
asks the freebooting Danite. . 

Micah thinks he has abundant cause of complaint, and the 
leader of the band, the earliest of Robin Hoods, confidentially 
advises him : “ Let not thy voice be heard among us, lest angry 
fellows run upon thee ! ” 

Here is the sardonic humor of Dan, which Samson largely 
shared. Such men were the friends and tutors of his youth, and 
in them we must not overlook a very prominent characteristic of 
Dan in these rude elder days — a deep religious feeling. When 
they saw a Levite exercising priestly office, the rude warriors 
besought him : “Ask, we pray thee, counsel of God, that we may 
know whether our way which we go shall be prosperous.” Then 
when they would build up a new city for themselves, they 
seek this son of Levi out : “ Go with us, and be to us a father 
and a priest.” When Laish lies before them, what say they? 
“ God hath given it into your hands.” Manoah had not forgotten 
the faith of his fathers ; he offered on the rock a sacrifice acceptable 
unto God. 

In this camp of Dan a new element entered into Samson’s life, 
the “ Spirit of God began to move him at times.” Hitherto he 
had heard his high destiny from his mother’s lips ; from earliest 
childhood he had been told of the “ man of God” who had twice 
appeared to predict his birth and mission. He had grown up 


SAMSON. 


219 


different from the other Danites, a Nazarite unto God, consecrated 
from his natal hour, no razor touched his head, no unclean food 
passed his lips ; the grapes of Timnath might yield their wines 
for others, but not for him ; meat from the flocks, and the fruits 
of the field sustained him, while the cool waters of the noble 
fountain of Zorah filled all his veins with strength. Every grand 
athletic exploit that woke the applause of the camp of Dan, was 
the sign that God had not forgotten him. Now came the divine 
power, moving within him, lifting him up to a new greatness ; 
these were hours when the soul matched the might of the body, 
and he felt truly strong. Hitherto we have seen him with 
unreined physical vigor, an impulsive, ungoverned and ungovern- 
ing soul in him, 

“ of wisdom nothing more than mean ; 

This with the other should at least have paired, 

These two proportioned ill, drove me transverse.” 

Samson was like nothing so much as the feet of the image seen 
in Nebuchadnezzar’s vision, iron and clay. “ Strong as iron ; for- 
asmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things ; ” but 
like those feet, he was partly strong and partly broken ; “ foras- 
much as iron was mixed with miry clay ; ” but they could not 
“ cleave one to another.” The divine grace, that was the iron of 
his strength ; the human weakness and self-serving, following his 
own pleasure, and giving free rein to his besetting sin, this was 
the clay. Strong to do, not to resist ; valiant against foes without, 
weak as a babe to the foes within. Loving his country well, him- 
self better ; without the wisdom to direct his strength or the 
humility to suffer it to be directed by others. God had ordained 
him to avenge and deliver his people ; Samson could not defeat 
the divine will, neither could he alter it a hair’s breadth ; but it is 
evident that if his life, his passions, and his energies had been 
consecrated to God, had he been a Nazarite in soul as in body, had 


220 


SAMSON. 


his will run like a joyous young angel in the line of God’s will, 
then his life would have grown in gladness and beauty unto ever- 
lasting day. As it was, the Lord’s way was worked out in dark- 
ness and in pain, the work was accomplished, the instrument was 
broken. 

With wine this Nazarite could not be tempted ; forever proof 
against the allurements of strong drink, which, like Minotaur, 
devours so many of the young men and even maidens of our day. 

“ But what availed this temperance, not complete 
Against another object more enticing ? ” 

“ Give not thy strength unto women,” was the counsel of King 
Lemuel’s mother, but Solomon fell a prey to the princesses of the 
heathen ; so in this earlier day, Samson yielded to the enchant- 
ments of the daughters of the Philistines. 

Among the vineyards of Timnath dwelt an idolater with two 
daughters, each fairer than the other. The dark eyes of the elder 
sister shining on Samson through the vine-leaves, lit a new fire in 
his easily stirred bosom. Lips redder than the wine she pressed 
from the grapes beguiled God’s strong young Nazarite. He would 
possess this woman at all hazards ; but he remembered doating 
Manoah and the loving mother up in the mountains of Dan, and 
he would not be false enough to them to marry without their con- 
sent ; but with his usual inconsistency he meant to force that con- 
sent, — a fashion of proceeding not entirely ignored by sons and 
daughters of the present time. Manoah, not being like his son in 
love with that charming and treacherous idolatress, very reason- 
ably inquired if love and beauty were vanished from among the 
homes of Israel, that a Nazarite must ally himself with a wor- 
shipper of Dagon. 

Here the clay nature asserted itself : “ Get her for me, for she 
pleaseth me well.” 


SAMSON. 


221 


Whatever other argument he might have brought to bear on the 
subject, he deemed none so decisive as his own pleasure. 

Out of all this God was to find an occasion of chastisement to 
those idol worshippers, and we trace the lengthening chain of 
events from the not unusual circumstance of a hungry lion roar- 
ing in the desert places, to the discomfiture of the Philistines, and 
the Judgeship over Israel through twenty years of national safety. 

“A young lion roared against him.” He had nothing in his 
hand ; but instead of thoughts of slaughter, his mind was full of 
his love-making as he went down to Timnath. For Samson to 
exercise his strength in these ways beyond the strength of ordinary 
men, was to exercise his faith, and draw on heaven for power 
suited to the emergency. No sooner did he make the needed 
effort than all his nerves and sinews were strung with superhuman 
might. He darted at the threatening lion, and seized its yawning 
jaws ; “ the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him he rent 
the great beast like a kid, and flung it back beside the road. 

Any young man might be pardoned for boasting of such an 
exploit ; but Samson was no boaster ; he did not even tell his 
admiring parents of the deed. 

Samson made no long wooing; the next time he went down to 
Timnath, was to take the bewitching Philistine to wife. His 
parents had gone before him, probably to make arrangements for 
the nuptials. Time enough had elapsed for the bees to take pos- 
session of the bleaching carcass of the lion, and already the combs 
dripped with honey — here was another link in the chain of cir- 
cumstances. Samson took honey and went on eating, royally 
bestowing a portion on his parents, who were reluctantly taking 
their part in the marriage. 

Thirty young men were feasting with the hero for seven days. 
To make the merry time yet merrier, Samson put forth a riddle, 
secure of its not being divined, and expecting by means of it to 


222 


SAMSON. 


add to his own possessions and plunder these foes of his peopltj 
whom he hated in his heart. It was the cropping out of the 
shrewdness and humor of Dan. 

But Samson was to show forth forever the danger of strange 
marriages, of being unequally yoked with an unbeliever. The 
Philistine wife had no sympathy with her Hebrew husband ; her 
cares were for the sons of her people, not for the servant of Jeho- 
vah. Here another weakness of this weakest of strong men comes 
out. Unable to resist importunity, he feebly denies her pleading 
for a time, and conscious in his heart of her faithlessness, on the 
last day of the feast he yields to entreaty, and unfolds the mean- 
ing of his riddle. This is apparently to defeat all plan of punish- 
ment to his enemies, and to force Israel yet further to contribute 
to the pride and pomp of their oppressors. But no ; a tempest 
of wrath wakes in Samson’s soul, he sweeps down on Ashkelon 
like a tornado ; thirty of the Dagon servers lie dead before him ; 
he goes back to Timnath to pay his wager to his comrades, and 
flings at them in bitterness the spoils of their brethren. His 
whole soul ^lows with passion at the treachery of his bride ; the 
fragrant plain and the honey-dropping vineyards of Timnath are 
now hateful in his eyes. He goes up to the mountain fastness 
where his anxious parents dwell, and leaves behind him his 
traitorous wife, who speedily gives herself to his former friend. 
Here is another link in the chain ; for visions of bright eyes and 
luring smiles flit through Samson’s dreams ; his hasty passion, 
that has been no righteous indignation, no zeal for God or coun- 
try, dies, and down he goes with a present in his hand to visit 
his wife. 

He finds himself betrayed. That fairer younger sister cannot 
lure him ; wrath burns hot as a volcano in his heart. The Philis- 
tine land is green with standing corn, fragrant with wine-full 
vineyards ; the olives are in their prime ; the hope of the winter 


SAMSON. 


223 


is in orchard and in field ; the wealth of the nation is between the 
nourishing earth and the dew-dropping heaven. Vengeance he 
will have that shall cry out of its completeness through all coming 
years ; yet, Danite that he was, he makes the tremendous punish- 
ment a ghastly jest ; three hundred foxes are his messengers of 
woe, and bear black desolation over all the Philistine plains. 
The fair valleys from which the Amorites drove the sons of Dan, 
lie scorched and smoking ; they may cry to Dagon in vain, for 
the dead roots shall send up no stalks again, and the scarred, 
cracked earth has no nourishment for her children. But was this 
enough? No. When the Philistines flocked together enraged at 
the ruin, and burned the false wife and her false father, Samson 
fell on this multitude, executing ancient lynch law, and “ smote 
them hip and thigh with a great slaughter.” What then ? 

He grew weary of working before his strength had failed. He 
hesitated in the deliverance of his people. “ I will cease/’ he 
said, and first of hermits, weary of strife, of passion, of gratifica- 
tion, and applause, he climbed to the bald top of Etam to abide 
alone. 

His hermitage was in the boundaries of Judah, the tribe lying 
next to Dan. In years gone by Judah had helped the chil- 
dren of Dan to maintain themselves ; they had heard of Sam- 
son’s strength, his punishments of the heathen foe, but hitherto 
he was the hero of Dan alone ; he was not the champion of a 
united Israel. It was a pitched battle now — Samson entrenched 
in Etam, and all the host of Philistia came up like locusts over 
the inheritance of Judah, to seize their enemy. The men of 
Judah cannot sacrifice themselves to Samson ; but three thousand 
of them go up and speak mildly to him. “ What hast thou done 
to our rulers, the Philistines?” ask the faint-hearted men of 
Judah. “Just what they did to me,” replies the champion. 
One cannot but smile at three thousand warriors begging perm is- 


224 


SAMSON. 


sion to bind this one lone man on Etam. Their request was no 
flower of eastern courtesy— it was the absolute expression of their 
attve. 

Samson seemed bent on jesting even in the most critical expe- 
riences of his life. He permitted these friends to bind him with 
two new cords, and lead him captive. Over this captive, brought 
bound to them at Lehi, the Philistines shouted too soon ; when 
that cry of triumph went up towards heaven, the Spirit of the 
Lord filled the deliverer of penitent Israel, and Judah looked on 
amazed while Samson vindicated his leadership, not of Dan alone, 
but of all the descendants of Jacob. It had seemed a slight thing 
that a weary creature of burden here had died, and the yet moist 
jaw-bone from which beasts had torn the flesh, lay on the ground ; 
it was a weapon prepared for a valiant hand, and armed only thus 
Samson laid a thousand Philistines dead at his feet. 

This famous weapon not only conquered his enemies and con- 
firmed the allegiance of his friends, but when the victor, warm 
with the battle, fainted from thirst, God, who ever preserved him, 
touched the hollow of the bone, and from it sprung such pure 
and life-restoring waters as blessed the eyes of Hagar in the wil- 
derness, when all her hope and love lay perishing in her dying 
Ishmael. The devoutness of his Danite blood appeared in his 
call upon God in his extremity, and in the name of the well by 
which he perpetuated the memory of his deliverance. 

After these vicissitudes came the palmy period. Our ordinary 
Biblical chronology makes Samson at this conquest over Philistia 
scarcely twenty years old. For twenty succeeding years he judged 
Israel, and by the terrors of his name kept their foes in awe, and 
made the subjection to the Philistines merely nominal. 

Samson’s strength well directed would doubtless have extermi- 
nated the Philistines, and have united Israel in one government ; 
measureless in strength and poor in purpose, we find him govern- 


SAMSON. 


225 


ing only a portion of the tribes of Jacob, and in the latter part of 
his life, that other Nazarite was raised up — Samuel, in whose day 
the Jewish Theocracy became before all nations the very crown- 
ing type of government. 

We see Samson, 

“ Whose strength, while virtue was her mate, 

Might have subdued the earth,” 

governing in a conquered peace for twenty years. But in this his 
mission was not fulfilled ; it was his to deal mightier blows on the 
followers of Dagon. In peace and prosperity he would not rise 
to the greatness of his destiny ; like Ephraim, he “ settled on his 
lees,” content with lower happiness than the fulfilment of a lofty 
purpose. 

Again, he coveted a heathen beauty : a girl of Gaza, fair in face 
and free in manner, won the roving eyes of the Judge of Israel. 
With their enemy shut safely within the walls of the strongest of 
all their fortified cities, the Philistines were sure of their prey, and 
eagerly watched for the morning light, which was to gild their 
triumph. Gaza was the key to the southwest country, and its 
gates and walls were so strong that its siege occupied Alexander 
the Great for five months. The wary Samson did not wait for 
daybreak ; at midnight he rose, took the “ doors of the gate,” 
probably such “ two-leaved gates ” as we find mentioned in Isaiah’s 
prophecy of Cyrus, and not only took the gates, but the “ two 
posts with the bar,” and, putting them on his shoulder, carried 
them “ to the top of the hill which is before Hebron,” — “no journey 
of a Sabbath day,” says Milton in his “ Samson Agonistes.” 

Samson had never failed to be deceived by heathen women, and 
yet he always suffered himself to be beguiled by them. 

The valley of Sorek possessed a graceful, bold-eyed enchantress 
named Delilah. And when we come to this part of his history, we 

are more than ever amazed at the utter folly and weakness of the 
15 


22 G 


SAMSON. 


strongest of men. No more a boy, but a man in the splendid 
maturity of his powers, he wilfully put himself in the way of 
temptation, yielded, saw clearly the net, and yet deliberately 
walked into it. He knew that this woman had sold herself to do 
the bidding of the lords of her people ; knew that she kept men 
lying in wait to capture him in some hour of weakness ; and thrice 
deceived, he yielded at last to the siren’s tears and entreaties, and 
betrayed not merely his own secret, but the secret of God, the 
secret that Covenant Angel had told to Manoali and his wife, 
the secret of that strong spirit wdiich worked in him mightily. 
Samson’s power was truly a treasure in an earthen vessel ; iron 
and clay from babe to boy, from boy to man; and now a tempta- 
tion shattered him, drove those diverse parts of his nature asunder, 
and left the hope of Israel a wreck in the hands of his foes. 

Where now is Samson ? With the dropping of his shorn locks 
on Delilah’s lap his strength fell from him : the spirit of God de- 
serted him : the Philistines put out the dark eyes that had blazed 
with the lightning of his fury against them ; they bound with 
brazen fetters the hands that had smitten them at En-hakkore- 
Lehi ; Samson, the glory of Israel, grinds Philistine corn, and all 
Gaza scorns and taunts him who carried off her gates. “ Strongest 
of mortal men,” “ man on earth unparalleled,” “ heroic, renowned, 
irresistible Samson,” fallen from the topmost pinnacle of earthly 
glory, he whose name should shine in holy writ, and should echo 
through the finest tales of all the mythology of heathendom. Was 

ft 

his mission ended ? No. The Almighty will had not yet been 
wrought out in him. He might have done God’s bidding, rising 
in grand strides from glory to glory. He had served himself in 
equal measure as he had, served his God; he had followed his own 
pleasure even before his country’s good. Now in darkness, in cap- 
tivity, in pain, God would eliminate the weakness of his na- 
ture, would beat out, break up, drive away the clay, and weld 


SAMSON. 


227 


the iron over into a true weapon for his service. How many a 
man, how many a nation, that would not rise to the splendor of 
their possibilities, has thus been wrought anew in the furnace of a 
merciful wrath, that burns but to improve. Months of serfdom 
passed ; once more the long hair of the Nazarite hung over his 
shoulders : he had repented before his God ; we know this because 
he was forgiven. Now in poverty and humility of spirit, faith 
grew in him, a grand overtopping emotion, which should make 
him a hero % before God. Himself, like his country, in bondage, 
Samson learned that glorious patriotism that will offer life itself 
a free sacrifice for the nation’s good ; he learned how not alone to 
be a ruler or a warrior, but a martyr. He would not now turn 
aside from waging the battle of God against Dagon. From the 
mornless night of his dungeon God heard Samson, like Ephraim, 
bemoaning himself as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke. “ Thou 
hast chastised me, and I was chastised : turn thou me, and I shall 
be turned. I repented : I was ashamed ; yea, even confounded, 
because I did bear the reproach of my youth.” 

Then did the Lord “ earnestly remember ” his fallen Nazarite, 
even as he remembered that other rebellious son ; and the grand 
hour of Samson’s deliverance alike from the bondage of the Phil- 
istines and the bondage of sin drew near. 

The heathen believed that Dagon, their god, had delivered this 
greatest of their foes into their hand, and a day of high festival, 
kept in honor of their idol, was to shine in double splendor, when 
Samson came with feats of strength to make sport for his masters. 
We watch him led to the temple by his guard : we see the son of 
Dan recalling the ghost of his former frolic humor to wake the 
laughter of his foes. The craft of Dan shines out in the wily en- 
treaty, “ Suffer me to lean upon the pillars whereon the house 
standeth.” Then the hush of expectation, the sightless Samson 
cries to his God in his heart : he offers himself freely on the altar 


228 


SAMSON. 


of his country and his faith. He feels no strength in himself; he 
remembers all his feebleness ; when he is weak, then is he strong. 
“ I pray thee, this once, O God!” Here is his faitli taking hold 
upon the mighty. “ Let me die with the Philistines.” Here is a 
most magnificent self-immolation. No more to sit at thy threshold, 
father Manoah : no more to join thy tumult of joy and arms, O 
camp of Dan. But, as he grasps these pillars, already the glory 
of the everlasting morning beams before his sightless eyes ; above 
the din of heathen rites he hears the chorus of angels welcoming 
the hero of Israel ; the Angel of the Covenant smiles forgiveness 
and help upon this servant, who in all his life had been so erring, 
and only at life’s close had learned to serve his Maker and forget 
himself. “ He bowed himself with all his might ; ” a loftier than 
mortal strength is within him ; the pillars snap like reeds, the 
walls are rent in sunder, the roof crashes down on the glory and 
flower of Philistia; what was but now a rejoicing host, defiant 
of the Most High God, has become a mass of quivering human 
clay, and fragments of architectural splendor ; the strong son of 
Dan lies in the midst of the slain, like a thunder-smitten tree, and 
seeing now Him who is Invisible, and bought him with His blood, 
Samson rises before the throne of God, where all. those wailing 
shades of idolaters have gone up for judgment. 

“ So the dead which he slew at his death were more than all 
that he slew in his life.” 

“ Plow died lie ? Death to life is crown or shame.” 

He who had shamed himself so often died well, was crowned* 
in death a Christian patriot, a hero of faith. “ They buried him 
in the burying-place of his father, between Zorah and Eshtaol.” 

Almost twelve centuries later, Samson’s name is set on the 
sacred page among those faithful “ of whom the world was not 
worthy, who obtained a good report through faith.” 

On the page of fable, the traditions of Hercules are probablv 


SAMSON. 


229 


reminiscences of Samson. The slaying of the Nemean lion ; his 
slavery to Omphale, when he lived effeminately and spun wool 
with the maidens ; and his. death, through the agency of his wife, 
mark a wonderful connection between the pretended son of Jove 
and the strong child of Manoah. But fable holds sometimes faint 
shadows of the loftier truths of religion. When Hercules laid 
himself down on his own funeral pile on (Eta, only the earthly, 
material part could perish : the divinity of Zeus within him was 
immortal. How this reaches our theme ; he was earthly and 
heavenly; he was the imperishable iron and the frailest clay; the 
fire consumed the one, and left the other unsubdued. So, in 
Samson, the weakest of the many weaknesses of our humanity 
clogged divine life ; in the furnace of his affliction he was fashioned 
over, fit for higher uses. How often since has this been seen not 
only in the book of revelation, but on the page of secular history, 
and in the society of our own time. “ What,” we say, “ is such a 
man God’s instrument? Why is he, then, so weak?” Is this 
man a son of the Highest? Behold he errs like a son of Belial. Is 
he one ordained to a grand mission, how does he then dally on 
his way? Such questions are offsprings of our weak human 
judgment. We reason thus : the gospel and its Source being ab- 
solutely perfect, we ought to receive it at the hands of a perfect 
messenger. How often are we proved false in our most careful 
reasoning! Science itself puts its votaries to shame. The chemist, 
from the analogy of experiments, would predicate that when he 
had poured together a solution of permuriate of mercury and a 
volatile alkali, he would obtain the precipitate of the red oxide 
of mercury. But what does he find ? In apparent contradiction 
of law, a white sediment is his result. If nature will not bear out 
the reasoning we base upon her laws, how much less will our 
Creator, in the lofty realm of spirit ? 

We say that the fulness of divine grace ought to be unfolded 


230 


SAMSON. 


to us by one complete in that grace ; but the magnificent compre- 
hension of the Divine eye sees for us something better : grace in 
action, grace conquering temptation, grace giving strength for re- 
pentance, grace laying hold of God, believing that he will forgive 
seventy times seven offences. In the eternal city we shall see 
grace triumphant ; here we are to see it warring, sustaining the 
shock of battle. 

As it seemed good to God that the Captain of our salvation 
should be made perfect through suffering — that the Divine Son 
should not take upon him the nature of angels, but the seed of 
Abraham — so it seemed good that that “ treasure,” “ the light of 
the knowledge of God,” should come to us in “ earthen vessels,” 
“ that the excellency of the power might be of God, and not of us.” 

Were the preacher of righteousness a glorious archangel, is there 
any reason to suppose that we would do less than John on Patmos, 
who fell down to worship him? If Jesus, having been tempted, 
knows how to succor them that are tempted, shall we not suppose 
that the shameful backsliding and cursing of Peter were made to 
subserve some high moral use, that he went to the erring and 
faltering with an especial fitness for his errand ? Can we not 
believe that when Samson, the sinful and self-serving, came out 
of prison in one high act to assert his faith victorious over fear of 
death, to rise and reign with God, that patriotism and piety were 
lifted grandly before all Israel ; and that when the falling crash 
of Dagon’s palace, and the death cry of his votaries, were caught 
up and echoed at Mahaneh-Dan, the shackles of fear and idolatry 
dropped from Israelitish spirits, and they returned again to their 
allegiance to Him who in the fires of his judgments had burned up 
the earthly evil, and wrought anew in strength his servant who 
had for forty years stood before them a Saint of Iron and Clay ? 


XI. 


SAMUEL. 

RELIGION IN GOVERNMENT. 


N the history of Samuel we are impressed not so much by 
the man himself, as by the ruling ideas, the leading 
thoughts of his time. These concerned questions of 
government, and to this day they possess deep interest. 
He lived at the hour when the Theocracy was in a measure lost in 
the monarchy ; when the government of Israel became in all out- 
ward appearance, like that of the nations round about. To 
understand the reasons of this change, and to be able to weigh its 
advantages or disadvantages, we must take a brief review of the 
political history of Israel, from the establishment of the nation ; 
and the political is inseparably the religious history. 

The first form under which the coming Christ was revealed, 
was that of an Avenger upon the serpent. Jehovah, he who should 
come, was to be the Restorer of Paradise, and the Deliverer from 
sin and death. Thus Eve expected him ; thus Enoch beheld him 
from afar, with ten thousand of his saints, whom He had rescued 
from their graves. 

Jehovah, the souks Saviour, was the Morning Star of hope, 
from the hour of exile from Eden ; but Messiah as King, as the 
Anointed Ruler, first beamed upon the prophetic eye of Jacob. 
The old man prophesying, lies on his dying bed; when he turns 

to Judah he gets a new revelation. Shining beyond the son, he 

231 



232 


SAMUEL. 


sees the coming King, he cries out in triumph, “ Judah, thou art 
he whom thy brethren shall praise. The sceptre shall not depart 
from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh 
come. And unto him shall the gathering of the people be.” 

It is a brief vision, accorded to one who has suffered much ; it 
passes in the mists of death, and for weary centuries of servitude 
returns no more. But the time came for the unfolding of this idea, 
the kingship of Christ. Christ had been exhibited as an inter- 
cessor, in his priesthood, his mediatorial work ; probably with far 
more clearness than we, puffed up with the wisdom of our later 
day, are willing to admit. When the Israelites reached Sinai, the 
hour had arrived when should be laid the foundations of Christ’s 
kingdom upon earth. To this end was constituted the kingdom 
of Israel ; a kingdom without a visible king ; in a word, a pure 
Theocracy. Behold then, in the wilderness before Sinai, a scene 
without a parallel. Here we find a great people, let us say four 
millions strong ; they are rich ; they are seeking for a promised 
seat of empire ; they are among their foes ; and they have no 
king like the nations round about. God gives them the first 
specimen of an elective sovereignty. To the people waiting 
before the mountain is submitted the question whether they 
will have God to reign over them, whether He, who had 
with a strong hand brought them out of Egypt, and had gone up 
before them in the luminous cloud, who now thundered from the 
rocky height, and shot the glistening arrows of his lightnings 
athwart the skv, should be forever their acknowledged king; 
whether they would bring their tribute to him as their suzerain. 

The question was put with entire clearness and particularity. 
“ Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare 
you on eagle’s wings, and brought you unto myself. Now, there- 
fore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then 
shall ye be to me for a peculiar treasure unto me above all people : 


SAMUEL. 


233 

for all the earth is mine. And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of 
priests, and a holy nation.” 

When Moses had delivered this message, the people with one 
accord took up a shout : “All that the Lord hath spoken, will we 
do ! ” It was a unanimous vote ; ay, more, it was a most solemn 
and binding obligation to fealty ; it was a holy infrangible cove- 
nant ; it was a constitution composed of one article, one provision, 
that Jehovah should be their King, and they his people ; and they 
would cleave solely and purely to the religion which he ordained. 
In token of his thus entering into supreme possession of them, as 
their King, by their own elective choice, they presently gave him 
seizin, when they brought of their choicest property, gold, silver, 
brass, purple, blue, scarlet, linen, skins, and cedarwood, to build 
him a house. 

Israel thus became literally Christ’s kingdom on earth ; a type, 
we take it, not only of his spiritual regnancy, but of the coming 
day, w T hen he shall be a true King over all the world, and his sub- 
jects shall delight themselves in the abundance of his peace. 

God, the sole Head of the Jewish Theocracy, administered his 
government by prime ministers chosen, and spiritually endowed 
by himself. Of these Moses was the first, and he would in a 
year’s time have safely established the Hebrews in the land of 
Canaan, had they not rebelled against their sovereign, refused to 
enter that country, and almost immediately insisted on so doing, 
when plainly assured that God’s presence was withdrawn, and 
consequently, with it was taken away all hope of their success. 

At the end of forty years’ wanderings, the people were placed 
under the care of Joshua, and bidden to cross the Jordan, and 
take possession of the land of the Philistines. This order com- 
ing to them, when their hearts were softened by grief for the loss 
of Moses, was humbly obeyed. The manner of their crossing the 
river, and \ the immediately subsequent events, produced in the 


234 


SAMUEL. 


whole nation a deep religious feeling. They were at this period 
loyal to their King ; they had full confidence in his power, desired 
nothing so much as his approbation ; looked for his guidance, and 
implicitly obeyed him. At this happy juncture, all the world, 
and all its best possibilities lay before the Hebrew nation. Their 
human strength was wedded to Omnipotence ; they were endowed 
with an immense moral power, before which the peoples of the 
heathen fell prostrate. No -good thing would have been kept 
from them, if they had held fast their allegiance to their King. 

Jehovah the sovereign of Israel was present, their leader in bat- 
tle; as such he appeared visibly to Joshua, as we may see in the 
wonderful story: “And it came to pass when Joshua was by 
Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, there 
stood over against him a man with his sword drawn in his hand : 
and Joshua went unto him, and said unto him, Art thou for us or 
for our adversaries ? And he said, Kay ; but as captain of the 
host of the Lord am I now come. And Joshua fell on his face 
and did worship. . . . And the captain of the Lord’s host said unto 
Joshua : Loose thy shoe from off thy foot, for the place where 
thou standest is holy.” From this we see that He who appeared 
to Joshua is He who appeared to Moses in the bush that burned 
unconsumed. 

The destruction of Jericho should have humbled Israel, inas- 
much as it was not wrought by an arm of flesh. The awe which 
spread through Canaan, however, began to make the Hebrews 
vainglorious, as we see in the report brought that two or three 
thousand men would be enough to smite Ai. This assertion shows 
that they were trusting to their own valor, and not to the accom- 
panying power of their King. The defeat at Ai humbled them, 
but its conquest inflated their pride ; for they at once became so 
self-sufficient that without consulting the will of their sovereign, 
they entered into a covenant with the Gibeonites. The insult 


SAMUEL. 


235 


and enormity lying in this unallowed compact will be seen, when 
it is considered, that they held the same kind of obligation to God 
that subjects acknowledge to a lawful earthly ruler ; and that they 
had no right to administer their affairs without the royal sanction. 
It is a monarchical myth that the king never dies. “ The king is 
dead, long live the king.” The incumbent may perish, but the 
office is immortal. The difference between the King of the Jews 
and the kings of other nations, was that the head of the Theocracy 
was immortal, eternal, and invisible in his own person ; the only 
wise God our Saviour, to whom be glory and power. 

This treaty of peace with some of the inhabitants of the land 
was the sowing of a deadly seed. By this act Israel had relin- 
quished a portion of their promised inheritance ; they incurred 
the wrath of their King ; by friendship with idolaters, they laid 
themselves open to temptations before which they frequently fell ; 
and as they had begun to take their affairs into their own hands, 
God, offended, suffered them for long periods to proceed in their 
own way to their ruin. 

If they had not been traitors to the covenant solemnly entered 
into ; if they had not broken the laws, and despised the high 
privileges of their Theocratic government, there was no shining 
pinnacle of success to which this nation might not have climbed. 
They had a code of laws upon which the noblest and most refined 
nations have since built their judicial statutes ; they had the high 
prestige which their departure from Egypt, their victories in the 
wilderness, and their entrance into Canaan, had purchased for 
them. 

As long afterward the Aztecs looked for the Children of the 
Sun, a golden-haired race of insurmountable bravery, the offspring 
of Quetzalcoatl, to come and subdue them; so the Philistine 
nations looked to the children of Jacob as their destined con- 


querors. 


236 


SAMUEL. 


Even after they had shorn and well nigh ruined their pros- 
pects, the Hebrews had such military triumphs as clearly 
evidenced what they might have attained, if they had been true 
to their constitution, and had not incurred the anger of their King. 
Five kings and their armies were destroyed in the going down to 
Beth-horon, at the time when Joshua commanded the sun and 
moon to be stayed in the heavens. Seven kings more were slain 
in their fenced cities ; their towns were sacked, and their lands 
became a possession to Israel. At the waters of Merom, Joshua 
again obtained a grand victory ; he swept the country from Seir 
unto Hermon, and cut off the Anakim in their mountains. 
Thirty-one kings are named as subdued and slain by Joshua, 
before he had obtained the half of the land which had been 
devised by the Lord to Israel. 

Of the wonderful victories of Joshua, we have trace in profane 
history. Moses, of Chorene, an Armenian historian, has written : 
“ When Joshua was destroying the Canaanites, some fled to Agra, 
and sought Tharsis in ships.” This appears from an inscription 
carved on pillars in Africa, which is extant even in our own 
time, and is of this purport: “We, the chiefs of the Canaanites, 
fleeing from the robber Joshua, have come hither to dwell. 

Procopius, the secretary of Belisarius, thus expresses himself, 
while mentioning Tigisis (now Tangiers), “ Where there are two 
columns made of white stone, near the great fountain, having 
carved on them Phoenician letters, which read thus : ‘ We are 
they who fled from the face of the robber Joshua, the son of 
Nun.’ ” 

Again, Suidas, the lexicographer, says : “And there are up to 
the present time such slabs in Numidia, containing the following 
inscription: ‘We are the Canaanites, whom Joshua the robber 
drove out.’ ” 

These records seem entirely those of eye-witnesses, and the 


SAMUEL. 


237 


epithets they apply to Joshua are those naturally given by 
enemies ; and evidence that they have not a Jewish origin. 

The Hebrews had laid a glorious foundation of empire at Sinai, 
when they sent up that shout for the Lord as their King. A 
little later they laid the foundation for sore national disasters, 
when they took idolaters as their allies ; and after the death of 
Joshua, they began to suffer the consequences of that ill doing. 

In Kings (1 Kings vi. 1), the period from the Exodus to the 
Temple is stated as four hundred and eighty years. 

Paul calls the government of the Judges “ about the space of 
four hundred and fifty years.” There are in the history periods 
unaccounted for, as the interval between Joshua and Shamgar, 
and the judgeship of Shamgar; other periods may overlap eacli 
other. We find, however, that between the death of Joshua, and 
the birth of Samuel, there were one hundred and eleven years of 
abject servitude to the Philistines ; when homes were invaded ; 
grain fields were ravaged; when there was not a smith in all the 
land of Israel ; when the people were utterly disarmed, and for 
fear of their enemies must gather fruit, and thresh grain with the 
utmost secrecy. 1 

This was the fearful result of their rebellion against God, their 
Sovereign : the fruit of their broken covenant. 

The last servitude of Israel was in the time of Samson. The 
iron hand of the “ giant judge ” broke finally the oppressor’s power. 

The lives of Samson and Samuel overlap each other. Samson 
was probably captured before the death of Eli, and the seizure of 
the Ark of God. The Ark was in the hands of the Philistines 
seven months; its return marked the cessation of the plagues 
sent on the cities of the Philistines, and they may have simultane- 
ousV celebrated their relief from these torments, their conquest 
of Samson, and the completion of their fated temple of Dagon, on 
that day when the blind giant brought down ruin on himself and 
them. 


238 


SAMUEL. 


Samuel is set before us as the child of many prayers; a child 
of the covenant. His history, like that of Moses and of many 
shining lights of later days, begins with a mother’s faith. 

The descent of his father, and the place of his birth, are among 
tlie vexed questions of sacred genealogy and geography. Elkanah 
is called an Ephraimite, and a Levite. He was probably a 
Levite, who had his dwelling in a city reserved from the inherit- 
ance of Ephraim, when each tribe made an appropriation of towns 
for the dwelling of the priests. 

At the time of Samuel’s birth, his father was living in Rama- 
thaim-Zophim — Hamah being a contracted form of the same 
name ; and Samuel seems to have clung lovingly to that place, 
for there he lived, built an altar, died, and was buried. 

Hannah, the mother of Samuel, was a woman of unusual gifts 
and godliness. From her reply to Eli in the Tabernacle, we may 
gather that she was almost a Nazarite in her practice; her gifts 
were those of a prophetess, as was fitting in the mother of him 
who was to form the first in the long unbroken line of prophets 
which ended in Malachi ; having filled a period of seven hundred 
years with revelations of the will and intentions of the Lord. 

The time in which Hannah lived, was the great age of vows ; 
thus, when beyond all things else she desires a son, she vows that 
the child shall be a Nazarite to God. Perhaps she had in her 
mind that other Nazarite, Samson, whose mother had been so 
long childless. The prayer of Hannah in the sanctuary is the 
only instance of the kind on record. 

It was a passion of devotion, a long agony of voiceless entreaty, 
when, with her eyes toward the Holy of Holies, the sorrowful 
woman forgot all surroundings ; saw no one who was near her ; 
had no thought in her heart, but her great wish, and Him who is 
the Hearer of Prayer. 

Hannah next appears at the Tabernacle, when she comes to 


SAMUEL. 


239 


consecrate her son to God, that he may dwell in the house of the 
Lord, as she says, abiding “ there forever.” She makes a full 
dedication of her son to her Maker. She shows her ardent faith 
in the name she gives him, and in her address to Eli : “For this 
child I prayed ; and the Lord hath given me my petition which 
I asked of Him. Therefore, I have lent him to the Lord ; as 
long as he liveth, he shall be lent to the Lord.” 

The song of Hannah on this occasion is akin to that of Miriam, 
Deborah, and Moses. Until the day of Samuel, the prophetic 
office had shone out occasionally. The three great patriarchs had 
been prophets ; Joseph also had spoken of things to come ; per- 
haps Ehud had shared the Divine inspiration. The three wonder- 
ful children of Amram had possessed it ; we see it now gleaming 
in Llannah, and anon it glows in her son with celestial radiance. 
After him it is like a beacon fire, springing from peak to peak ; 
before it dies in one, it reappears in another, until comes at last 
that dread silence and darkness of nearly four centuries. But 
when the fire of inspiration blazes up once more across that gulf 
of blackness, the light is in the home of Zacharias. Mary the 
Virgin it is who prophesies, and her song is singularly like that 
of Hannah at the dedication of Samuel. 


HANNAH. 

“ My heart rejoiceth in the Lord : 
my horn is exalted in the Lord.” 

“ The bows of the mighty men are 
broken, and they that stumbled are 
girded with strength.” 

“They that were full have hired 
themselves out for bread. The Lord 
maketli poor and maketh rich. He 
biingetli low, and lifteth up.” 


MARY. 

I 

“ My soul doth magnify the Lord ; 
and my spirit hath rejoiced in God 
my Saviour.” 

“He hath scattered the proud in 
the imaginations of their hearts : He 
hath put down the mighty from their 
seats. ” 

“ He hath exalted them of low de- 
gree. He hath filled the hungry with 
good things, but the rich hath he 
sent empty away.” 


240 


SAMUEL. 


All that we hear further of this mother is her faithful love, in 
coming yearly to see her consecrated child, bringing him a little 
coat ; and also that for the child whom she lent to her God, she 
had given her three sons and two daughters. We know not 
when, nor how she died; but we know that she had accomplished 
a great mission for her people, when she dowered her son with 
her faith, and set him to minister in the sanctuary. 

Scripture sharply contrasts the youthful sanctity of Samuel 
with the profligacy of the sons of Eli. The boy-priest had his 
duties in the holy place, attending to the' lights in the seven- 
branched candlestick, and opening the doors at sunrise. His 
whole time was passed in the Tabernacle ; he seems to have slept 
in the sacred court. Here he must have seen one of those name- 
less prophets, who come forth in Holy Writ, deliver their message 
and disappear, showing that the Lord kept to himself witnesses 
who are not recorded on the inspired page. A man of God came 
with a word to Eli. We imagine the holy child standing 
appalled as he listens to the doom denounced on the unrighteous 
priests: “ There shall not be an old man in thy house forever, 
all the increase of thine house shall die in the flower of their age.” 
With this denunciation ringing in his ears, with this scene of 
the warning prophet, the grief-struck, remorseful, yet submissive 
Eli, present in his memory, we wonder that in his own old age 
Samuel repeats Eli’s error, and suffers his sons to do wickedly, 
provoking the people of the Lord to sin. 

Samuel was in his early youth called to the prophetic office in 
a vision. He also was made the bearer of a doom to Eli, the 
foster father, whom he loved. 

From this hour, when he had heard the voice of God, the 
Israelites recognized ’in him their leader and teacher. They 
came up to him to the Tabernacle, and, as says the Scripture, 
“ the Lord was with him, and did let none of his words fall to 


SAMUEL. 


241 


the ground. And all Israel, from Dan to Beersheha, knew that 
Samuel was established to be a prophet of the Lord.” 

For a long time, the indignant King of Israel had withdrawn 
himself, and would hold no communication with his rebellious 
people. He now .turned with favor to them, and chose Samuel as 
his prime minister. 

Samson had grown to manhood, his physical exceeding his 
spiritual strength. He had failed to rise to the greatness of his 
mission ; and now God chose another man, and glorified him 
spiritually; and in the manner in which the son of Elkanah sur- 
passed the son of Manoah, living long, guiding the people,* 
building up the kingdom of God on earth right gloriously, we 
see “ how wisdom excelleth strength ; ” we see how true strength 
is in spiritual rather than physical development. 

Once more Shiloh, the place where the Tabernacle was pitched 
and the Ark rested, became the real capital of the nation. There 
God, returning to his people, throned himself between the cheru- 
bim on the mercy seat ; there again the Sovereign answered by 
Urim and by Thummim ; there he spoke with an audible voice 
to Samuel ; the golden age of Israel was begun. A shadow was 
yet to tall, on account of the sins of the house of Eli. 

Over the dawn which had broken gloriously with the beginning 
of Samuel’s prophetic career, came a cloud and a storm. In a 
pitched battle, the Israelites were defeated by the Philistines. 

In their dismay, they turned to the Ark of the Covenant, rather 
than to the God of the Covenant. They brought this Ark up 
from its sacred resting in the Holy of Holies. To rebuke this 
incipient idolatry, the enemy was again permitted to triumph, the 
Ark was carried off as Philistia’s trophy, the two traitor priests 
were slain, and Eli, after a judgeship of forty years, broke heart 
and neck, when he heard that the Ark was taken. 

When the Tabernacle at Shiloh was desecrated, Samuel dis- 
16 


242 


SAMUEL. 


appeared. He never afterwards is exhibited in connection with 
the Tabernacle. For twenty years he is lost to sight. His early 
precocity was, in retirement and devotion, nurtured to that strong 
faith, that wisdom, that prudence and self-abnegation, which 
fitted him for his subsequent long and stormy public life. 

From the hapless hour when Eli’s sons brought the Ark to the 
battle field near Aphek, it was divided from the Tabernacle until 
late in the reign of David. Thus the Throne and Royal Palace 
of Israel’s King were dissevered. He withdrew his face, till 
suddenly becoming conscious of their desolation, they “ lamented 
after the Lord.” 

Now Samuel returns to them : like Moses, he has learned 
much in his seclusion. He left the people in his youth, perhaps 
before his twentieth year ; he returns in the meridian of life, after 
two decades of absence. 

He came in power, proclaiming pardon to the penitent. The 
people had given themselves to the lewd worship of Ashtaroth. 
Samuel cried to them to put away their strange gods, and prepare 
their hearts for the Lord, who would return in power to them. 

Long trial had softened these erring hearts ; the people remem- 
bered him whose child face had glowed with Divine inspiration, 
whose early years had been devoted to God, who had been the 
mouthpiece of their King. From one end of the land to the other 
spread a revival. Baalim and Ashtaroth were put away, “and 
they served the Lord only.” 

This teaches us how, in these days, to secure the Lord’s pres- 
ence, and his reviving grace. Let us put away our false gods ; 
cease to worship Mammon and pleasure, serve the Lord only, and 
haply he may return to us, and usher in his kingdom with power. 

Samuel appointed a great National Convention at Mizpeh. 
During the Theocracy religion was politics; politics was also 
religion. It is very different now-a-days. For the nation to 


SAMUEL. 


243 


come together, re-affirm their Covenant, re-aceept the Constitution 
proclaimed on Sinai, and cry after their King, was at once their 
highest religious, and soundest political act. 

The people looked to Samuel as an intercessor, who had pecu- 
liar favor with God; his prolonged shout or cry for help seemed 
to possess grand power in drawing down that help. At Mizpeh, 
the people wept, fasted, and poured out water before the Lord, 
crying, "We have sinned !” "Samuel judged the people at 
Mizpeh.” He probably rehearsed the law; pointed out their 
errors and shortcomings ; made peace between man and man, and 
put away their strange gods. 

While thus occupied in the renovation of the body politic and 
the re-establishment of the Theocracy, it was found that their 
ancient enemies, the lords of the Philistines, were coming up in 
strength against them. The enemies of the Lord chose a poor 
time for attack, coming thus in the midst of the ardent zeal, self- 
sacrifice, and faith of a revival. 

The people evidenced their renewal in their exhortation to 
Samuel : “ Cease not to cry unto the Lord for us, that he will 
save us.” This was Israel's harvest of wrath. Now they 
learned what the nation could do when their King was with them. 
Every arm was strong ; every heart was high ; as they flung 
themselves on the advancing foe, the Lord shot forth the arrows 
of his lightnings. He thundered against the heathen ; the solid 
ground reeled under the feet of the Philistines; their souls grew 
faint from fear. As Philistia faltered, Israel renewed strength. 
The battle became a wild rout of the heathen,' who were smitten 
as they fled, and the glorious times of Joshua seemed restored. 

So complete was the subjugation of the insolent Philistines, that 
they gathered head no more in all the days of Samuel. 

This seems to be Samuel's only military enterprise. His 
achievements were in the fairer fields of peace. He had secured 


244 


SAMUEL. 


for his country the restoration of all the cities which had been 
captured from them ; he made peace with the Amorites ; and then 
devoted himself to the establishment of pure religion, the enforc- 
ing of the ancient laws, the developing of the resources of the 
land, and the culture of the people. We can see the immense 
work which Samuel thus performed, when we contrast the condi- 
tion of Israel shortly before his day, with that of Israel shortly 
after his death. About the time of Samuel’s birth the tribes were 
without a common centre or judge; the Danites were freebooters; 
the Benjaminites were nearly destroyed ; they were without arts 
or education, without weapons of war, or the ordinary imple- 
ments of husbandry. At the end of probably twenty years after 
Samuel convened the people at Mizpeh, Saul was made king of a 
united nation. We soon find him with an army; with palaces; 
and all the usual equipages and splendors of a king. Forty years 
more, and the dominion of David is the acme of Israel’s glory. 
For this rapid and wonderful prosperity, Samuel, the judicious 
judge, laid the foundation. 

The fear of this warrior prophet rested on the Philistine nations. 
The diplomacy of Samuel is exhibited in the restoration of cities 
which he extorted from his humbled foe; his systematic execu- 
tion of his duties, is shown in his yearly circuit through the land, 
when he held his court in the three cities of Bethel, Gilgal and 
Mizpeh. In this, yearly circuit he saw that justice was dealt 
to the least and to the greatest ; that every beginning of idolatry 
was destroyed ; that the law was honored ; the Sabbath observed ; 
the will of the Lord was inquired for. A godly nation is a pros- 
perous nation ; godly prosperity insures national happiness. Says 
Yattel : “ Felicity is the legitimate object of all men.” Plenty 
in the State is not sufficient for the happiness of a nation. A 
nation must first provide for its necessities ; it must then provide 
for its true felicity. To succeed in this the people must be 


/ 


SAMUEL. 


245 


instructed to seek felicity where alone it can be found. Virtue is 
the purest source of felicity, but nothing so assures virtue as piety. 
“ Piety is that disposition of soul which leads us to have a view 
of the Divine Being in all our actions.” A nation should then 
be pious, and it should be the care of rulers to teach the nation 
piety. 

“ If all men ought to serve God, the entire nation in its national 
capacity is doubtless under obligations to serve and honor him.” 
States being moral persons, the duty of serving God rests on them 
equally with private individuals, and a failure in that duty is sure 
to be chastized like the corresponding failure in the single indi- 
vidual. 

“ Plenty and virtue,” argues Vattel, “ secure the perfect happi- 
ness of a nation.” God had promised plenty to his Israelitish 
subjects, so long, and in proportion as they held fast their allegi- 
ance to him. When Samuel f the Lord’s vicegerent, saw to it 
that his nation held pure their ancient faith, he took the very best 
and shortest means of building up the prosperity of the nation in 
all points. 

A valiant general ; a wise and honorable jurist ; a firm, far-seeing 
ruler; Samuel was also an example of godliness in his own per- 
son. He had established his dwelling at Hamah ; there he set up 
an altar to his God. It is strange and sad, that after the warn- 
ing experiences of his youth, Samuel should have fallen into the 
sin of Eli. While governing the nation well, he forgot to govern 
well his own household. He had two sons whom, with parental 
partiality, he made judges of the people, and established them in 
Beersheba. Their course shows the dangers of hereditary authority. 
The high position of their father made these young men arrogant 
and grasping. The entire history of the Scripture is against the 
law, and so-called right of primogeniture. Primogeniture asserted 
its claim on the race of Cain, and in the next dispensation in the 


246 


SAMUEL. 


line of Ham ; but in the Theocratic succession it was steadily put 
aside; first-born sons, no oftener than other sons, received the 
birthright. Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Ephraim were not first-born. 
So later, David and Solomon were younger sons. 

Samuel made his sons judges when he began to feel the feeble- 
ness of age. He was now past sixty. The reign of Saul was 
forty years, and Samuel lived nearly to its close ; he must have 
almost reached one hundred years. Kitto gives the age of Samuel 
as ninety- two. 

As we come to the time when the Theocracy was merged in the 
Monarchy, it may be well to glance for a moment at the period 
of the J udges. It was certainly by no means a barbarous age, as 
some would have us suppose ; neither was it what Heeren calls it, 
u an heroic age.” Not only by the Hebrews themselves, but by 
all surrounding nations, God was recognized as the King in 
Israel. The history of the seven months’ sojourn of the Ark 
among the Philistines, proves this. During this period of the 
Judges all the varying fortunes of Israel were so many sensible 
proofs of the power and dominion of God their King ; for just in 
proportion to their faithfulness, their loyalty to him, was their suc- 
cess. They were prosperous just in the degree that they were 
pious. And this ratio of prosperity and piety is not confined to 
that age or nation. We may apply it to-day to ourselves. When 
the Hebrews were united under their King, Jehovah, they gained 
splendid victories, and the heathen became their vassals. When 
they followed false gods, transgressing the conditions of the 
national constitution, they became the servants of their foes. 

Jephthah, Samuel, and others of the judges were called to their 
position by the electoral voice of the people, who perceived that 
God had endowed them with especial gifts for that office. Some 
of the judges, as Gideon, were taken from very humble station, 
others were high priests, military men of renown, or prophets. 


SAMUEL. 


247 


The first duty of the judges was to administer the laws, of the 
Mosaic code, in the fear of the Lord. In emergency of war, the 
command of the army fell to them as the highest executive 
officers. Their authority was limited by the divine law alone, 
and in cases of perplexity they were directed by the holy Oracle. 
There seems to have been for the judge no salary, no state, no 
retinue. In war he may have had a larger share of spoils than 
other men, and the people brought them presents, as to Samuel 
and Saul. That they should take bribes or pay for administering 
justice, was a token of unusual depravity, as we see in the case 
of the sons of Eli and Samuel. 

According as the judge was the servant of God, the zeal- 
ous upholder of his worship, and the defender of truth, his 
judgeship was long and successful. We find these judges men of 
faith and prayer ; men of noble, magnanimous character and lofty 
patriotism ; who sought their country’s good, and did not, as Wil- 
liam of Orange said of Egmont, “ fill their own purse while 
ignoring the need of the State.” Under the Theocracy, religion 
and patriotism were so welded together, that to be religious was to 
be patriotic, and vice versa . In these suggestions of the judges 
and their office we have followed the thought of Jahn in his 
survey of this period. 

The Judgeship was not hereditary. When Samuel gave his sons 
the office to exercise in Beersheba he erred ; it may be ignorantly. 
Perhaps he did not apprehend the true character of his children. 
If he did, he treated their sins too leniently, and bitterly did he 
rue it. The increasing feebleness of Samuel, and the rampant 
wickedness of his heirs, turned the thoughts of Israel to having 
“ A king like the nations round about.” 

While the venerable Judge was rejoicing in the prosperity of his 
people, and predicating great glory for their future, if they held 
fast the principles of the Theocracy, he was filled with anguish 


248 


SAMUEL. 


by having them come before him, in the persons of the elders, with 
the astounding request : “ Make us a king to judge us like all the 
nations.” The bitterness of his grief was increased by the reason 
they gave : “ Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy 
ways.” 

Alas, he had neglected the government of his children, that he 
might apply himself to the government of the nation, and now his 
undisciplined sons were ruining that nation. 

The Theocracy of the Hebrews might have been perpetual while 
the world endured ; their monarchy was the beginning of their 
national dissolution. 

As in the day when Adam took of that fateful fruit and did eat 
he began to die ; so in the hour when Israel’s elders came up to 
Hamah saying: “Give us a king,” they began to disintegrate as 
a commonwealth. This inception of decay was not at first visible; 
as in autumn, dying nature covers herself with tenfold splendor, 
so under David and Solomon the history of the Jews increased to 
a singular magnificence, the nation shone in its scarlet, purple and 
gold, but under all was the deadly touch of the finger of decay. 
All the prosperity attained under the three first kings could have 
been gained under a consistently maintained Theocracy, for in dis- 
cussing this subject further we shall see that only as the kings were 
Theocratic were they successful. Success under the Theocracy 
would have been permanent ; under the monarchy it was 
evanescent. 

God had his own plan to work out, the typology of the kingdom 
of his Son to carry forward even by means of this rash demand 
of Israel’s elders. The losses and troubles of the Hebrews had 
arisen, first, from national cowardice and effeminacy ; second, from 
tribal jealousies. But cowardice arose from want of faith in their 
King; their jealousy from lack of love to him, which would have 
extended itself to his subjects, their brethren. Thus their disasters 


SAMUEL. 


249 


were occasioned by treachery to the fundamental principles of their 
Theocratic government ; and the remedy they proposed was a yet 
further divergence from those principles. 

Samuel was highly displeased. Too shocked and indignant to 
reply to the demand of the elders, he carried the case in prayer to 
God. The proposition of the people greatly angered the Lord, 
because in its intent it was a direct violation of the constitution 
framed at Sinai. They were rejecting Jehovah as formally as they 
had elected him. Moreover, the demand of the people was for 
“a king like the nations;” that is an unlimited king with autho- 
rity to frame and execute laws. In regard to the request for a 
visible king God saw fit to grant that, for his intention was to 
choose a godly monarch, and give him a perpetual kingdom in 
making him the progenitor of Messiah. A Theocratic king, a king 
who felt himself God’s deputy, his satrap, governing under him, 
carrying out God’s laws, and paying him tribute, the Jews might 
have. But first they were to see the folly of their own request in 
having for a space a king — like the nations. The reply of God 
to the praying Samuel was : “ Hearken unto the voice of the peo- 
ple. They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that 
I should not reign over them. . . They have forsaken me, and 
served other gods, so do they do to thee.” This is akin to what 
Christ told his disciples : “ The disciple is not above his master, 
nor the servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that 
he be as his master; and the servant as his lord.” This comforted 
Samuel, and it would be well if we all of us laid it to heart in 
many of the storms and vexations of this earthly life. “ They 
have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me.” “It is enough 
for the servant to be as his lord.” 

Samuel convened the people, and taking their request as they 
made it, described the king who should be to them as the kings 
of neighboring nations, the sovereigns of Damascus, Zidon and 


250 


SAMUEL. 


Nineveh. Wildly rose up the one-voiced shout of the rebels : 
“ Nay ! but we will have a king.” 

The people stood before their Judge. He was showing them 
on the one hand Jehovah their anointed King, on the other the 
human despot. It was such a scene as angels looked upon amazed 
a thousand years later, Pilate standing before the tumultuous as- 
sembly and giving them their choice between the Lord of glory 
and a murderer, and led on by their chiefs, they doom their race 
by their criminal demand : “ Not this man, but Bahibbas.” 

The Judgeship of Samuel did not end with the election of a king. 
“ He judged Israel all the days of his life.” His greatest anxieties 
and labors were yet to come. These are so entwined with the 
lives of Saul and David that we leave them for consideration under 
their separate monographs. 

At Gilgal Samuel formally presented the new sovereign to the 
people, and in an eloquent address rehearsed the way the Lord 
had led them, and sketched his own administration. The Lord 
answered his protest by thunder, and all the people trembled. 
That thunder in wheat harvest was a sound ominous to the new 
government. Thus, after about four hundred years, the Theocracy 
was apparently superseded, and Israel had “ a king like unto the 
nations.” 


XII. 

SAUL. 

GOVERNMENT WITHOUT RELIGION. 


f HEN God acceded to the request of the Hebrews for a 
king, he reserved to himself the right of choosing a man 
for that high position. The Lord meant that the desire 
for a human sovereign should fall in with his own pur- 
poses, accomplish his own designs, and unfold the Messianic reign. 
The king of Israel must not, like the kings of the heathen, arro- 
gate to himself the right to make laws, or to offer sacrifices. The 
headship of the Church was at once dissevered from the crown. 
So long as God alone was King ifi Jewry, Church and State were 
indissolubly united. When a man came to the throne, then the 
Churcli was separated from the State ; the High Priest was su- 
preme in his own functions, and never more should there be, with 
God’s consent, a union of Church and State in one person, until 
the feet of the Returned Christ should stand upon Mount Olives. 

Thus, because the king of Israel was chosen by the Lord ; be- 
cause he exercised the sovereignty under God ; was obedient to his 
pleasure, and removable at his will, he was styled : “ The Lord’s 
Anointed.” And we shall see in the case of the first Hebrew 
monarch that when he assumed for himself more than the Lord 
allowed, he was cut off. The first man whom God raised to the 
throne of Israel was Saul, the son of Kish. Kish was a powerful 

and wealthy Benjaminite, living in Zelah. The tribe of Benjamin 

251 


252 


SAUL. 


was the most warlike of the twelve. Old Jacob well described it 
when he said: “Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf; in the morning 
lie shall pursue the prey, at evening he shall divide the spoil.” 
Fierce, wayward, fitful, lawless, the whole tribe was very like its 
crowning blossom, the man who came out of it to be first king 
of Israel. 

The territory of Benjamin lay between Judah and Ephraim ; 
the possessions of Dan shut off Benjamin from the Philistines ; it 
was bounded on the east by the fertile valley of the Jordan ; in 
luxuriant plains and beautiful dells it swept along to the dark- 
wooded slopes of Kirjath-jearim. Lofty eminences afforded posi- 
tions of advantage in war, and the valor of the tribe made each 
one historic ; the table-land was fertile ; the valleys were capable 
of being admirably defended ; the water courses were abundant ; 
in the centre was the delightful plain of Jericho, the city of palm 
trees. There were many places of note within the boundaries of 
this tribe. The ark after its captivity remained at Kirjath-jearim 
in Benjamin ; here also was Bethel, one of the most ancient sanc- 
tuaries in Palestine; Gibeon, “the great high place;” Mizpeh, 
where were held the assemblies of all Israel; and here also was 
Gilgal with its grand associations. 

Of all the young men in Benjamin, Saul the son of Kish was the 
most princely ; yet more, it is said that in the twelve tribes he had 
not his peer in beauty. Like the heroes of Homer, he was of 
exceeding height and strength ; the historian of Scripture tells us 
that he was “ a choice young man, and a goodly, and there was not 
among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he; from his 
shoulders upward he was taller than any of the people.” 

When we first find Saul he is as remarkable for humility and 
simplicity as for splendor of appearance and exceeding bravery. 

When God showed this young man to Samuel as the future king 
of Israel, the aged seer experienced for him a fatherly affection. 


SAUL. 


253 


The nature of Samuel was aesthetic, with true Hebrew ardor he 
doated on personal beauty ; we see this in his unconcealed admira- 
tion of Saul, and yet later when his eye rests well pleased on 
the seven stately sons of Jesse, and on the boyish beauty of 
David. 

Saul was privately anointed king by the prophet. At a pub- 
lic meeting in Mizpeh he was pointed out by lot, and when 
Samuel presented him to the multitude, saying: “ See ye him 
whom the Lord hath chosen, that there is none like him among 
all the people,” the easily impressed multitude shouted with joy. 
Nevertheless, rioters arose, disputing the claim of the newly 
elected king ; and as the time for his inauguration had evidently 
not come, Saul went home to Gibeali. That he departed out of 
wisdom, rather than fear, is proven by his immediate attack on 
the Ammonites, and the great valor he there displayed. By this 
act he conquered the homage of his new subjects, and Samuel, 
taking advantage of his protege’s popularity, convened the nation 
at Gilgal to swear allegiance to the new monarch. 

Gilgal was memorable for the pillar of twelve stones set up by 
Joshua, after the miraculous crossing of the Jordan. There cir- 
cumcision was renewed ; there the grand first passover after the 
wanderings was held; there the manna ceased; there the Captain 
of the Lord’s host appeared ; there they camped when God smote 
Jericho; when Ai was taken; when Achan sinned; when that 
fatal covenant with Gibeon sowed an eternal discontent in Israel. 
Here, on this storied plain, rich with some of the loftiest memories 
of their people, with ruined Jericho lying in the distance, stood 
Saul and Samuel before the assembled nation. 

“ Behold,” said the aged seer, pointing to his companion, “ your 
king walketh before you ! And I am old and grey headed . . ; 
and I have walked before you from my childhood unto this day.” 

He next formally took the people to witness the purity of his 


254 


SAUL. 


life, and the strictness of his justice in all his own administration. 
With one voice they bore testimony to his probity and benevolence. 

He laid a heavy charge against them. 'After rehearsing the 
way in which the Lord had led them, he said : “ And ye said Nay, 
but a king shall reign over us, when the Lord was your king.” 

Samuel had already laid down the laws of the kingdom, “ writ- 
ten them in a book,” and read them to king and subject. As he 
now continued his address, the bright summer sky grew ominously 
dark ; unusual clouds crowded like armies the horizon ; cold 
winds surged from the distant mountains, chill with unmelting 
snows; a winter storm broke upon the assembly ; the thunder pealed, 
and whirling rain dashed into the awe-stricken, up-turned faces. 

It was an hour of evil omen for the coming reign. 

After this exhibition of the Divine Presence, Samuel assured 
the people and the new-made king that the only danger of the 
future lay in forgetting the Covenant of God ; in failing to acknow- 
ledge Jehovah as Supreme Ruler. So long as Saul and his subjects 
remembered their subordination, that Jewry was only a satrapy 
of the sky, so long should prosperity attend them. “ God for- 
bid,” said the prophet solemnly, “ that I should sin against the Lord 
in ceasing to pray for you.” 

This calls to our minds how God entwines his own cause and 
honor in that of his people. “ They shall prosper that love thee,” 
sings the Psalmist of the Church. Christ says : “ Inasmuch as ye 
did it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto 
me.” Prom the protest of Samuel, we see that it is a sin against 
God to cease to pray for the prosperity of the Church. The scene i 
closed with a fearful -warning : “ But if ye shall still do wickedly, 
ye shall be consumed, both you and your king.” 

Samuel in relinquishing the government to Saul remained still 
the Prophet of God, the prime minister of the kingdom ; and, as 
before, expounded and carried out the Mosaic law. 


SAUL. 


255 


There is something very tender and pathetic in the feeling be- 
tween Samuel and Saul. The Seer doats on the king as on a son ; 
the beauty of Saul, his bold, ardent temper, his strong affection 
and reverence for the prophet, bind the old man closely to him ; 
while in all Saul’s perversion, and mad, downward career, he 
cleaves with pitiful longings to the sanctity of Samuel, as if it 
could save him ; he depends on his intercession to avert the ruin 
which only his own penitence could hinder ; and mad or sane, he 
receives with humility the prophet’s rebukes. 

Saul was one of the many characters who are safest and most 
beautiful, in a private station. When he was lifted to the dizzy 
height of royalty in a manner so unexpected, he knew not how to 
control his passions and ambition. 

Pie had been made The Lord’s Anointed. This he should have 
considered his choicest designation, his highest honor. The 
beginning, the cause, and the completion of his awful failure in 
government was, that he forgot his vice-regal position ; he failed 
to apprehend his true estate, and regarded himself rather as an 
independent monarch, than as the Viceroy of the Sky. Instead 
of being holden by the grand fundamental principles of the 
Hebrew constitution, he assumed the autocratic state'of the despots 
of the heathen. Having inaugurated this error, and begun this 
real rebellion against his King, God Almighty, Saul went from 
bad to worse. The anguish occasioned by the accusations of a 
naturally tender conscience ; the self-reproach for the ruined 
prospects of his children ; his terror bf a doom which he could at 
times see looming up from the darkness of his future, and the 
unnatural excitement of his strife against heaven, begetting 
jealousy, distrust and hatred of men, worked havoc with the 
originally noble nature of Saul, and poisoned “the sweet and 
gentle current of his blood.” 

The tendency of Saul to establish a rule “ like the nations,” 


256 


SAUL. 


was exhibited in his gathering a standing army at the very begin- 
ning of his reign. In less than two full years he also erred 
vehemently in assuming to himself the right of leading the wor- 
ship of the nation in the offering of sacrifice. The Israelites 
being assembled at Gilgal to fight with the Philistines, only waited 
for the prophet to come and secure for them the benediction of 
their God. This was the hour to test the obedience of Saur, and 
to decide the light in which he looked on his royalty. The test 
was a severe one, for Saul was a heroic man, his patriotism, natural 
spirit, and kingly pride, were all enlisted in the approaching con- 
flict; and in every hour of waiting for the prophet’s tardy feet the 
cowardly Hebrews were deserting their ranks, and the forces of 
the Philistines were augmenting. However, Saul had been warned 
by Samuel of the exigencies of this hour, and if he had been firm 
to his duty as a rock, obeying like a true soldier the orders of 
his Great Commander, he would have had his kingdom assured 
to him forever. Misjudging his real position, the vassal of heaven 
assumed supreme rights. The bold hand of Saul laid on the altar 
a burnt-offering, and presented it an unblessed sacrifice to God ; 
he offered a peace-offering to inaugurate the war between himself 
and his Liege ! Scarcely had the blood of the victims ceased to 
flow and the smoke to ascend than Samuel appeared. 

Saul, aware of his sin, endeavored to excuse it. Heavy was 
the task assigned the prophet; to pronounce vengeance on him 
whom he loved as a son. “ Thy kingdom shall not continue.” 

Immediately after this sentence, the rashness of Saul’s character 
appears in the interdictive curse laid on any who should taste food ; 
a curse which nearly resulted in the death of Jonathan ; raised a 
tumult in the army, and caused the starving people to transgress, 
in eating the bleeding flesh at evening, contrary to the law : “ And 
the blood, which is the life thereof, thou shalt not eat.” 

From that hour, Saul had fits of madness or melancholy which, 


SAUI.. 


2o7 


as he advanced in years, came at shorter and shorter intervals, ana 
wrought him to wilder phrenzy. 

“ 0 what a noble mind is here overthrown ! 

The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s eye, tongue, sword ; 

The expectancy and rose of the fair state, 

The glass of fashion, and the mould of form, 

The observed of all observers, quite, quite down ! 

Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, 

Like sw r eet bells jangled out of tune and harsh, 

That unmatched form and feature of blown youth, 

Blasted with ecstasy 1 ” 

"With the self-will and towering pride of Saul, a religious and 
prophetic spirit were strangely blended. This power of prophesy- 
ing first came upon him as he left Ramah, after the anointing 
oil had been poured on his head. 

We see the mind of Saul tossed to and fro like a rudderless 
boat on swelling waves. One hour the king appears prophesying 
before the Lord; in another he is an arrant liar; we behold him 
building altars, and anon with cruel eye approving the slaughter 
of the priests of the tabernacle. 

During the first eleven years of his reign the kingdom of Saul 
became strongly established by many victories. He was a warrior 
of whom his people might well be proud. Moab, Ammon, Edom, 
and Zobah submitted themselves to him. 

Josephus says of him: “ Saul had many chariots and horse- 
men, and against whomsoever he made war he returned conqueror, 
and advanced the Hebrews to a great degree of success and pros- 
perity, and made them superior to other nations.” 

By this time the king had assumed a royal state of living ; hav- 
ing palaces, body guards, and all the luxuries and ostentation of 
the Eastern despot. 

About the end of the eleven years, Samuel went to the king 
with a message from God : “ I remember that which Amalek did 
to Israel. . . . Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy alj 

17 

m 


258 


SAUL. 


that they have, and spare them not ; but slay both men and wo- 
men, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” Plere 
we see the command was absolute and explicit ; it left no loop- 
hole of escape for Saul ; no excuse for doing his own will. The 
order came from the Supreme Ruler to his Viceroy, and all that 
remained for him was to obey, or openly to rebel. 

In passing cursorily over this point, we remark, how though the 
vengeance of the Lord may slumber awhile, it is never forgotten. 
When he has laid up of his wrath for any people, it will break 
upon them in a terrible tempest, although it may be long delayed. 
God never forgets. , 

“ Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small ; 

Though with patience he stands waiting, with exactness grinds he all.” 

When the hour of retribution had come for Amalek, the doom 
was — entire destruction. 

Saul rejoiced to receive this command ; his was not the joy of 
the obedient heart, but the joy of the warrior when he may un- 
sheath his sword. 

By this time the army of Israel was numerous and well equip- 
ped. Abner, the son of Ner, Saul’s cousin, was the chief captain 
under the king. Abner the ill-fated, and Saul “ the gazelle of 
Israel,” were men well matched either in peace or war. They 
went up elate before the host ; they smote Amalek utterly. Two 
hundred thousand footmen, and ten thousand men of Judah, were 
the soldiers numbered in Telaim. These overran the whole ter- 
ritory of the Amalekites and laid it waste. This victory added 
to the dangerous pride of Saul. The thought seized him to have 
a king for his state prisoner, like the kings of the nations. It 
was a favorite idea of monarchs then to grace their train with 
captive sovereigns. Agag, a man of lofty height and royal port, 
was therefore preserved alive, and disobedience to God began ; 
Saul spared also the finest of flocks, herds and beasts of burden. 


SAUL. 


259 


“ What was vile and refuse that they destroyed.’’ Thus Saul had 
deliberately despised the authority of his Chief and King. After 
this conquest he went home to Gilgal. 

This was the turning-point in Saul’s history ; from that fateful 
day, his life was one long tragedy. The Lord forsook him, and 
the unchained demons of his own nature grew rampant. He is 
an instance of what every man would be ; even those whom we 
set the highest for graciousness and probity, if the Lord should 
withdraw his Spirit from them. How little does that man who 
boasts his morality, while he knows himself to be unconverted, 
realize that his virtue, in which he prides himself, is the product 
of God’s grieved Spirit lingering about him still, chained, per- 
haps, by some good man’s prayers ? 

Thus far in the history, Samuel, potent with his God, had held 
the erring king of Israel up into the light of heaven, on the strong 
arms of his intercession. Now in the night, God came to him, 
saying : “ It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king : 
for he is turned back from following me, and hath not performed 
my commandments.” 

Nothing can add to the pathos of what follows: “And it 
grieved Samuel, and he cried unto God all night.” 

We note the debasing effect on Saul of the quick withdrawal 
of God’s Spirit, in that the king comes out and meets the prophet 
with a lie on his lips. 

“ Blessed be thou of the Lord : I have performed all the com- 
mandment of the Lord.” 

The answer of Samuel is most pertinent. “ What meaneth 
then this bleating of sheep in mine ears ; and the lowing of oxen 
which I hear?” 

The blush of shame must have crimsoned Saul’s cheek at this, 
but he added another idle falsehood : “ The people spared the 
best of the sheep and the oxen to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God.” 


260 


SAUL. 


Mark, Saul did not say “ our” or “my” God, but “thy.” 
There is nothing which will more provoke a righteous indigna- 
tion, than to have religion quoted as the cover of baseness. 
When the word of the Lord is made a cloak for injustice, evil 
seems tenfold more shameful. 

Doubtless the gray, majestic prophet eyed the king with anger, 
scorn, and wonder, blended with pity and grief for the fall of one 
he loved so sincerely. Solemnly he spoke: “Stay, and I will 
tell thee what the Lord hath said to me this night.” 

Quelled, the king bent his haughty head, answering : “ Say on.” 

The address of Samuel began with the question which sug- 
gested the great beauty and reward of Saul’s early humility. 
“ When thou wast little in thine own sight, wast thou not made 
head over the tribes of Israel ? and the Lord anointed thee king 
over Israel.” This reminds the king to whom he owes fealty. 

Here we see a striking difference between Saul and David. 
Saul needs to be reminded of his lowly origin ; David himself 
recalls his own, glorifying God. Samuel next rehearses the plain 
behest concerning Amalek. 

Saul reiterates his defence. He saved for sacrificial use. 
“ Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifices 
as in obeying the voice of the Lord ? Behold, to obey is better 
than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion 
is as the sin of witchcraft ; and stubbornness is as iniquity and 
idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he 
also hath rejected thee from being king.” 

, It is an important lesson ; one we would do well to heed. It 
is one we could suitably call to mind in some grand church, 
beautiful with gilding and frescoes, carved wood, stained glass, 
marble and damask ; with spire nearer heaven than the hearts of 
its worshippers; where a rich-toned organ fills the intervals of 
the prayers of highly reputable, wine-drinking, card-playing, 
Mammon-serving Christians. 


SAUL. 


261 


Smitten with terror and anguish, Saul cried : “ I have sinned ! 
Pardon my sin, and turn again with me, that I may worship the 
Lord.” 

His evident intention was a reversal of his sentence. Samuel 
so understood it, and replied : “ I will not return ; for thou hast 
rejected the word of the Lord ; and the Lord hath rejected thee 
from being king over Israel.” 

So saying, Samuel made an effort to depart, when Saul, in a 
passion of despair, laid hold of the skirt of his mantle, and in the 
violence of his detaining effort rent it. 

This mantle was a characteristic garment whereby the last 
judge was known through all Israel. Perhaps Hannah’s loving 
hands had designed the fashion of it, for her boy Nazarite ; and 
in tender remembrance her son copied it, for his garb in all his 
life. Looking on the rent, the Prophet used it as a sign. “ The 
Lord hath rent the kingdom from thee this day ; and given it to 
a neighbor of thine, that is better than thou. And also the 
Strength of Israel will not lie, nor repent.” 

This word was decisive. Saul felt now that he was hopelessly 
rejected. He ceased his prayer for the future, and only asked 
an outward honor before the elders of Israel. On this ground 
of present courtesy, Samuel turned with the remorseful king, and 
worshipped. 

An act of vengeance remained to be performed. Said Samuel : 
“ Bring ye me hither Agag, the king of the Amalekites ! ” 

Agag came with pride, and mincing delicacy ; he flattered him- 
self that the bitterness of death was passed, and that he could 
live in luxury, Saul’s captive king, to grace his royal pageant, 
and eat at his board in golden chains. He was a murderer and a 
tyrant, against whom was a black record written in the book of 
doom. 

Short shrift was allowed him. The gray-beard seer was an 


262 


sattl. 


old athlete. His wrinkled hand was strung with thews of steel. 
He dropped his rent mantle from his unbent shoulders, furnished 
himself with a well-tempered sword, perhaps from Saul or Abner, 
and pronouncing sentence thus : — 

“As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother 
be childless among women.” He hewed Agag in pieces before 
the Lord. King and courtiers stood mutely by, as the Prophet 
thus vindicated the justice of him who had long ago pronounced 
this sentence on the royal Amalekite. 

Thus they parted, Saul and Samuel ; between them ran the red 
tide of Agag’s blood ; Saul’s sword was wet with the retribution 
the seer had wreaked ; Samuel’s mantle had been rent by the 
hand of Saul, and thus torn had become prophetic of a kingdom 
rent away. 

Slowly the old man went back to Hamah; his heart was sore 
and heavy ; wildly in his palace did the king strive to wake 
mirth, and maintain pomp ; ever in his ears rang the words : 
“ The Lord hath rejected thee,” and before his eyes waved the 
torn mantle of the man of God. 

They met no more in the flesh. Withdrawn from him, w T hose 
downward career he could no longer stay, Samuel mourned apart. 
The depth of his love for his king, and the sincerity of his 
sorrow, are shown in the rebuke of the Lord, fifteen years after 
these events : “ How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I 
have rejected him ? Fill thine horn with oil, and go ; I will 
send thee to Jesse, the Bethlehemite, for I have provided me a 
king among his sons.” 

Here enters an important element into the life of Saul, his 
acquaintance with David, and the tender love, the bitter hate for 
him, which battled in the half mad monarch’s soul. 

As Saul’s anointing came in the midst of Samuel’s life, and 
Saul the king, superseded Samuel the judge, who yet lived on, 


SAUL. 


263 


and whose life and work were entwined in that of the new made 
monarch ; so now, when Saul’s reign is little more than half over, 
David is secretly anointed, is brought to court as a harper; be- 
comes a warrior, and as heir apparent of the throne by the decree 
of God, fills a large space in the annals of Saul’s unhappy reign. 

The Spirit of God departing from the rebel Saul, rested richly 
on the loyal heart of David. This redounded to the advantage 
of the miserable king, for David became the champion of the 
kingdom, and, moreover, by his divine gifts, soothed and solaced 
the perturbed soul of his sovereign. 

Saul, the ardent and humble young man ; Saul, the bold war- 
rior, must ever wake our warmest admiration. All the best traits 
of Saul shine out in the rarely beautiful character of Jonathan, 
than which a nobler is not embalmed in Holy Writ. Jonathan, 
the pious, the brave, the patriotic, the unselfish, the ardent, shows 
us what Saul might have been had he consecrated his life and his 
sovereignty to the Lord. 

It would be wrong for us to suppose that the three or four acts 
of disobedience detailed in Scripture were the only errors of Saul ; 
or that for them solely he lost the kingdom. These instances are 
merely given out of many, which , clearly showed that Saul was 
incapable of appreciating his true mission or status. As the first 
king of Israel, he occupied a position of note; if he went on, un- 
checked in arrogating to himself power to direct the national affairs, 
and trample on the ordinances of Jehovah, there would be no 
hope for the nation or its future rulers. Saul must be made an 
example of, lest bad rules and evil precedents should be estab- 
lished for future reigns. Had Saul been permitted to go on un- 
checked, the principles of the Hebrew state, and the object of its 
foundation, would have been utterly annihilated. 

It was about the date of the anointing of David that Saul’s 
mental malady so greatly increased on him, that friends and cour- 


264 


SAUL. 


tiers began to seek for remedies. The peculiar susceptibility of 
the king to sweet sounds, occasioned them to seek for a skilful 
musician to calm his perturbed spirits, and thus David was sent 
for to come to court, and the king and his successor stood face to 
face. 

Saul’s need not be supposed a case of demoniacal possession ; 
once let the spirit of God be withdrawn, and a man needs no other 
tormentors than the unloosed demons of his own disposition to de- 
throne reason, and goad him to most exquisite anguish. 

From the time of this meeting with the son of Jesse, Saul was 
tossed between extremes of love and hate. He admired the mu- 
sician and the hero. He listened, lulled to unwonted calms, to 
the singing of some of those matchless strains which have been 
alike the cradle songs, the battle cries, and the martyr hymns of 
the Church for ages. He exulted in the courage and high faith 
which cut Goliath down, and in a little while, the praises of the 
Israelitish women, the favor of the court, and the thought of the 
future royalty, stung him to such a phrenzy of rage and hate, 
that he was thirsty for David’s blood. 

In these bl^ck moods Saul often sought the life of David ; he 
also tried to kill his own son ; he ordered the slaughter of the 
priests, even eighty-five of them in one day ; he perverted the 
married faith of his daughter ; broke his own covenants • bribed 
his people to gross treachery ; and at the head of his army pur- 
sued from fastness to fastness his most loyal subject and faithful 
friend, the unoffending son of Jesse. In the midst of these mad 
pranks Saul was sustained in his throne by the faithfulness of the 
members of his father’s house ; the fraternal loyalty of the tribe 
of Benjamin, and the prestige of his valorous past. So daring and 
successful a warrior had firmly established himself in the hearts 
of the people of Israel. 

Thus passed twelve tempest-lashed years. One while the re- 


SAUL. 


265 


morseful monarch would weep and be reconciled to his “ son 
David.” Again he set a price on his head, until David fled the 
land, and, an outlaw, took refuge with his country’s foes, but even 
there remained true to his nation. 

The fierce, wild acts of Saul were multiplied ; Samuel died 
and was buried in his own house at Hamah, mourned by united 
Israel. Until he died there had been a fountain of justice, an ad- 
ministrator of the law in the kingdom ; when he was gone, virtue 
and piety seemed perished ; the kingdom which Saul’s valor had 
established was tottering to its fall ; its centripetal force was gone, 
and it began to drop asunder of its own weight. Thus will any 
kingdom where God is not, begin to perish. It may endure very 
much longer than this of Israel, but its ruin is inevitable. Thus 
the Homan nation fell ; thus Spain and France in our own day 
have lost their high estate. Whenever a nation leaves God out 
of its account, that nation is condemned already, and over it, as 
over Troy, shall be written, Fuit. 

The Philistines, elated by the death, long delayed, of their arch 
enemy Samuel, and seeing the weakness of the kingdom, under 
its maniac ruler; knowing that David the champion was in exile, 
gathered head once more, and marched up to the plain of Es- 
draelon, and with horses and chariots and weapons of war, made 
a formidable array, defying Israel. Along the slope of little 
Hermon by Shunem were pitched the myriad tents of Philistia. 

Saul, like an aged war horse discerning the battle from afar, 
organized his forces, and went up and encamped in Gilboa. 
Three noble sons went with him ; for a while the* fire of heroism 
brightened the royal soldier’s eye. He had established himself 
on historic ground ; here was a spot made glorious by the faith 
and achievements of Gideon. It w£ts by the spring Harod, whence 
the youthful judge had sent back all who lacked his own grand 
faith in the coming event. The name of the spring, Harod — 


SAUL. 


2 6(3 

trembling — was a fateful augury for Saul. An emotion hitherto 
unknown took possession of him : “ When Saul saw the host 
of the Philistines he was afraid, and his heart trembled 
greatly.” 

Samuel was dead. God had departed from him : u And an- 
swered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by the 
prophets.” 

In this horrible premonitory silence, Saul grew desperate. Once, 
in his zeal, he had rooted out of the land wizards and sooth- 
sayers ; now to them he turned, when earth and heaven alike 
were deaf to his cries. Alas for the man who has shut upon 
himself the gate of mercy, and stands without, bemoaning to the 
darkness ! 

Ever a wayward mixture of religion and superstition, Saul 
disguised himself, and, accompanied by two faithful servants, 
went at night to Endor, to consult a woman dwelling there,, 
who claimed to have converse with a familiar spirit. On the 
scene which follows volumes have been written, discussing whether 
the apparition which appeared was real or an imposture ; whether 
the woman had an evil power or had none ; whether she was 
surprised at the result of her own incantations, was playing a 
part, or expected an answer to her spells. It matters little ; the 
salvation of the soul is not wrapped in questions such as these. 
The important lesson lies in the thought of Saul, who might 
have risen so high, who fell so low; who might have touched 
the verge of life full of years and honors, and as he lost sight 
in death of his weeping courtiers, might have met a convoy of 
angels. His humility would have been his exaltation ; his arro- 
gance was his sore defeat. 

As Saul stood waiting for the witch-woman to bring him an 
answer as to the issues of the morrow, she beheld a godlike figure 
rising in threatening majesty before her. An aged man wrapped 


SAUL. 


267 


round with that sacred, peculiar mantle, which she, as well as all 
living in Israel, knew as the garb of Samuel. 

Alas, the mantle of the vision had an ominous rent, the token 
of the lost kingdom. 

When Saul had received a description of the Appearance, he 
bowed with all his old time reverence for Samuel. 

There is nothing more wonderful in Scripture than the conver- 
sation which ensues : “ Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring 
me up ? ” 

That painful answer: “ God hath forsaken me, I am sore dis- 
tressed.” 

That close inquiry : “ Wherefore dost thou ask after me, seeing 
God hath departed from thee, and become thine enemy ? ” 

Surely in the dying hour, no beloved saint in glory, no Chris- 
tian friend or relative, no man of God, can help the soul which is 
not stayed on Jesus. In Christ alone is provision for the hour, 
when flesh and heart shall fail. 

“ To-morrow, thou and thy three sons shall be with me. 
God shall deliver Israel into the hand of the Philistines.” 

The only intimation here is of death ; the king and his sons 
should have passed out of the land of the living, into Sheol. 

At these dread words, Saul’s gigantic form bowed, and he fell 
fainting upon the earth. At last his servants and the woman 
forced him to eat, and before dawn he returned to the camp. 

He had made lip his mind to die, and, like a brave man, he 
would die sword in hand. His pristine courage returned ; if the 
decree had not gone out against Israel, his valor would have 
redeemed his people that day. He saw his army scattered ; on 
Gilboa those three goodly sons fell down slain. Above their 
dead bodies, exposed to the onset of the archers, stood Saul, 
fighting like a lion at bay, “ sore wounded of the archers,” and 
striving still amici blood and pain. His sons were lost; his 


268 


SAUL. 


kingdom was lost; hope was lost; but he would sell his life 
right dear. 

When the ranks of the Philistines were closing in, and cap- 
tivity was imminent, Saul, having asked death as a favor at the 
hand of his armor-bearer, fell on his own sword and died. His 
devoted attendant followed his example. Saul lay there, frozen 
in all the majesty of death ; his crown on his brow, his royal 
bracelets on his wrist, his gleaming armor girding him, his sword 
hilt clasped by his self-destroying hand. “ The beauty of Israel 
is slain upon thy high places. How are the mighty fallen ! ” 

The triumphant heathen set up a shout of joy over that princely 
group, the hero father and his three hero sons, lying slain upon 
Gilboa. “ How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war 
perished ! ” 

The armor of these royal soldiers was sent to the Philistine- 
lords, and hung up for a trophy in the Temple of Astarte in 
Bethshan ; over the walls of this city were suspended the stripped 
corpses, while the heads, whose splendid projects had desolated 
Philistia, were sent to the Temple of Dagon at Ashdod. 

But almost forty years before Saul had cast bread on the waters, 
he had done a noble deed, now to be recompensed. He had de- 
livered Jabesh Gilead from Ammon, and now by night, the 
grateful citizens, who had since their rescue loved him well, arose 
and secured the insulted bodies of Saul and his sons ; carried 
them to Jabesh, made for them a royal burning, and buried them 
with due honors under a Tamarisk tree. Still later, mindful of 
his early friendship, David removed t,he inurned ashes of Saul 
and Jonathan to a tomb in their native city, Zelah of Benjamin. 


XIII. 


DAVID. 

A GREAT SINNER AND A TRUE SAINT. 

' 

(oy||H E most flourishing period of Jewish history commences 
.6)01 with the reign of David, and lasts eighty years, “ until 
^ ie kingdom, like the cloak of Jeroboam, is rent asunder.” 

^ This bloom-time of the nation is about as long as the 
later glory day of the Babylonian Empire. 

At the death of Saul, the reign of David began in Hebron, 
over the tribe of Judah alone; after seven years, he became 
sovereign overall the tribes, making Jerusalem, and the strong- 
hold of Zion, the trophy of his valor, his capital. 

At the time when the anointing oil, poured on his head by 
Samuel, consecrated him Saul’s successor, he was but fifteen years 
of age. In probably no more than five years from that time, he 
became the object of Saul’s envious hate, a fugitive and an outlaw, 
until at thirty he was relieved from his chief troubles, by the 
death of his unhappy foe. 

Glancing at the ancestry of David, we find two very famous 
women — Rahab, named by the Apostle among the heroic vindi- 
cators of their faith ; and Ruth, who shines forever in Scripture, 
a model of self-devoted affection. 

David heired the high soul, the far-seeing wisdom, and the 
burning faith of Rahab ; the beauty, the humility, and loving 

heartedness of Ruth, fairest of gleaners. He is best known to us 

269 


270 


DAVID. 


of any old Testament character, his life being given us with much 
minuteness of detail ; and in his Psalms we have the record of 
the trials, the falls, the temptations, the victories, the joys and 
woes, of his soul. 

In David, Judah the brave, the rash, the ardent, the eloquent, 
seems to live again, endowed with a double portion of God’s 
Spirit ; and never was there a man who needed a double portion 
more, to contend with the madness of his passions. Types of 
character are forever reproducing themselves; as in David, Judah 
seemed to live anew, so since David, there have been those who 
have found in his traits and experiences an amazing similarity to 
their own. 

David had a rare genius for music and poetry; he had an 
unusual talent for government, being able to win and control the 
hearts of men ; his soldiers experienced for him an ardent affec- 
tion. Remarkably bold and successful in war, he yet cultivated, 
with equal enthusiasm, the arts of peace ; he could make treaties, 
and chastise enemies with the same facility. He seems to have 
had strong family affection, as evinced in his care for his aged 
parents, and for his nephews. He was the child of his parents’ 
old age, and probably trained up with his nephews as his com- 
panions. His rashness is shown in his march against Nabal, and 
in many warlike achievements; his humility, in the readiness 
with which he accepts the advice of Abigail and Nathan. 

In personal appearance, David was fitted to attract the admira- 
tion of his beauty-loving countrymen; he was remarkable for 
comeliness of countenance, and grace of manner. The brightness 
of his eyes, and his strength and agility, are noticed in Scripture. 
Swift as a roe of foot, his strong arms could break a bow of steel ; 
his hand was sure in throwing sling-stone or javelin, and in 
wielding the sword. He lived in a troublous day, and was a man 
of war ; he fought with giants, and yet his chief wars, his fiercest 


DAVID. 


271 


enemies, his strongest giants, were fought in the battle ground of 
his soul, and he was full often worsted in the strife. 

Perhaps no character delineated in Scripture, unless it be that 
of Jacob, has excited so much amazement. The sins of David 
were so tremendous, his falls seemed so great, even to the very 
lowest depth of hell ; and yet he is called the “ man after God’s 
own heart.” He has led in enraptured strains the worship of the 
Church for centuries ; he has risen to lofty heights of love and 
devotion ; has had such wonderful revelations of Divine glory 
and mercy, and yet has blackened the story of his life with so 
many crimes, that men stand astonished before this complex 
character — one of the world’s greatest sinners and greatest saints, 
welded into a single human soul. Add to all this, while he was 
a man who sinned most and yet was most saintly, he was also a 
man who suffered and enjoyed far beyond ordinary mortals. 

There are two passages in Scripture which unravel for us the 
mystery of David’s life. “ I dwell in the high and holy place, 
with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive 
the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite 
ones.” 

David was as remarkable in his repentance , as he was in his 
erring. His contrition was profound as the depth of his guilt ; 
there was never a man more humble before God ; he was strong, 
not so much in resisting temptation, as in sorrow for sin ; and in 
the complete casting of himself on the mercy of God. “To 
whom much is forgiven, the same lovetli much.” Very much 
was forgiven to David, and the ardor of his love was like a 
seraph’s. 

As we shall see in tracing the story of his life, his eminent 
characteristic was his childlike lowliness toward God. 

The history of his saintly and sinful life naturally divides 
itself into three parts. His childhood at home ; his vicissitudes 


272 


DAVID. 


from his appearance at court to the end of the life of Saul ; his 
reign. The first two periods are of fifteen years each, the last of 
forty. We know little of his early days, save that he served in 
the menial office of a shepherd ; that alone and almost unarmed 
lie slew a lion and bear who attacked his flock, becoming in these 
instances a type of his Glorious Descendant, who made himself a 
servant of servants, and who was the faithful shepherd, ready to 
lay down his life for the sheep, and losing none of all those which 
the Father gave him. The last and favorite child of his parents, 
he was called David, “ the beloved,” “the darling,” and was des- 
tined to become alike the darling of the nation and the darling 
of the skies. 

During his second period of persecution and of favor, an April 
day of storms and sunshine— one while in court, chief favorite, 
another hour hunted like a partridge or a hart upon the moun- 
tains — David developed his soldierly bravery, a loyalty which 
made him worthy to reign, a patience which is r&rely joined to so 
much boldness, a devotedness of friendship, “ passing the love of 
woman,” and a craftiness that was all his own. In this period come 
those tender episodes of his sparing Saul’s life, his covenant and part- 
ing with Jonathan, his thoughtfulness for his parents, his rescue of 
Keilali. Those darker records follow of his falling into polygamy, 
one of the grand errors of his life ; his freebooting career, his high- 
handed manner toward Nabal, his artful feigning of madness at 
Gath, his deliberate lie at Nob, which was the cause of death to 
eighty-five priests and Levites, and his remarkable course of deceit, 
slaughter, and robbing at Ziklag. 

During this period David was sometimes counselled by Samuel, 
who dwelt with him a while in Naioth. As Samuel’s life drew 
near its end, God sent another prophet, Gad, who was for years 
David’s mentor. 

As this second period of his life closes, David appears most un- 


DAVID. 


273 


lovely. He had become to a great extent a bold freebooter. 
Nothing can justify his false and cruel conduct toward Acliish, 
who, in his honest confidence, saying, u Thou art good in my sight 
as an angel of God,” makes all David’s friends blush for him. 
This portion of his history closes with the wild scene at Ziklag, 
where his lawless followers, driveu to despair by the loss of their 
families and property, seek to stone David ; and after mutual 
wrath and upbraiding, the voice of Abiathar, the priest, falls like 
oil on the tossing waters of strife, and David redeems all which 
the Amalekites have carried away. While flushed with this vic- 
tory, rejoicing in recovered fortune, and in the renewed loyalty of 
his adherents, David received the news of the death of Saul and 
Jonathan. Here the magnanimity of his character shines forth 
resplendent. Jonathan he loved as a brother, Saul as his king. 
He did not pause to consider that their death had paved for him 
a short road to the throne; he forgot the injuries received at 
the hands of Saul; he remembered only what was good, and 
bursts forth into such a lamentation as has seldom embalmed the 
memory of king or kaiser, or crowned a tomb with imperishable 
beauty. His song was Saul’s best epitaph. 

Not only this, but the Amalekite, who brought the news, ima- 
gining that it would be welcome, strove to glorify himself as the 
slayer of Saul, exhibiting the diadem and bracelets, rifled from the 
dead body, as the proof of his tale. In noble indignation against 
one who had presumed to slay the Lord’s Anointed, the gray old 
warrior Saul, David ordered the man to be slain. The Amalekite 
had unwittingly pronounced his own death warrant. 

Thus, at the end of his fifteen years of wandering, the better 
nature of David shines forth ; he appears once more as worthy of 
his high place in the Church and in the world, and fulfils the 
generous promise of his beautiful youth. 

During this long period of probation, there had appeared in 
18 


274 


DAVID. 


David one lofty virtue — his willingness to await the time of the 
Lord ; the humility with which he sought to have all his steps 
directed. Again and again might he have slain Saul, or raised 
the standard of a successful revolt ; but his reply to all tempta- 
tion was, “ Who can stretch forth his hand against the Lord’s 
anointed and be guiltless? As the Lord liveth, the Lord shall 
smite him, or his day shall come to die, or he shall descend into 
battle and perish. The Lord forbid that I should stretch forth 
my hand against the Lord’s anointed.” It was thus that David 
was content to let the Lord lead the way. If all Christians pos- 
sessed this characteristic, they might be sure of being more com- 
fortable and more successful. There is a deal of time lost by good 
people in going where the Lord has not gone before them. They 
find no thoroughfare, and must needs return, and always more 
weary and despondent than when they set out. 

While in the grand. affairs of his life he took counsel of God, 
David often fell into difficulty by neglecting this precaution in 
other matters. He did not go to Gath by direction of God. This 
was the time of David’s life when he was especially a learner. 
By all his trials, his errors, his success, he was being trained for 
forty years of kingcraft. His disasters, his follies, his victories 
ripened his mind and enriched his heart. Through all these ad- 
versities he became not only a great king, but a psalmist whose 
writings have been as the diary of religious life in all ages since. 
How many tempest-tossed, distracted, overwhelmed souls have 
found their deliverance through some of the experiences of David? 

After the death of Saul David went up to Hebron, where he 
was formally anointed king at a gathering of the tribe of Judah. 
The family of Saul had set Ishbosheth, the last of Saul’s four sons, 
on the throne. David’s crossing over to Achish had worked 
against him in the minds of Israel. Ephraim was ever envious of 
Judah, and Benjamin naturally clung to the house of Saul. 


DAVID, 


275 


When Saul was dead all his virtues were remembered, his sins 
were forgotten ; the heart of Israel turned to him as one martyred 
in their defence, and they would have paid their debt of gratitude 
by yielding their allegiance to his son. Again David waits. Seven 
of his manhood’s best years pass by while in Hebron he kings it 
over Judah, and patiently abides the Lord’s time. 

Hebron was a city of note, a very ancient place. In the time 
of Abraham, Ephron the Hittite was lord of the town. • Here the 
patriarchs and their wives were buried ; here the spies gathered of 
the fruit of the l^nd ; here Caleb had his portion. It was one of 
the cities of refuge, a Levitical city, in the midst of one of the 
most fertile districts of Palestine. Hebron lies in a deep rich 
valley, twenty-two miles to the south of Jerusalem, and is yet, 
after that capital, the largest city in Palestine. 

At the end of several years, the violent deaths of Abner and 
Ishbosheth left no claimant to the kingdom but David. Doubtless 
during these years David had vindicated his patriotism and his 
ability to rule. The peace and prosperity of Judah had won the 
admiration of the remaining tribes, and with one acclaim they 
hailed David as their king. For the third time he was anointed 
and crowned, and for three days the joyous people celebrated the 
happy event. The little band of exiles who had hidden in the 
caves of the hills had become “ a great host, like to the hosts of 
God.” Now was fairly inaugurated that glorious reign when foes 
were held in awe ; when rivals made treaties of peace with Israel ; 
and when the internal prosperity of the kingdom was such that 
want was unknown, and perfect order reigned throughout the 
land. 

The nation under David reached its acme by direct favor of God. 
Never a very large domain in extent — indeed only a little.territory 
like Wales — hemmed in by the immense empires of ancient Egypt 
and Assyria, Palestine was the theatre of the most momentous 


276 


DAVID. 


events in the world’s history, the battle ground of centuries, and 
for eighty years wielded a power second to none on earth. The 
land possessed a wonderful variety of climate and vegetable pro- 
ductions ; it had also a diversity of inhabitants, from the valiant 
dwellers in the hills to the luxurious and aesthetic inhabitants of 
the valleys ; its swarming millions were architects, artists, agricul- 
turists, shepherds, scholars and soldiers, finding in themselves 
capacity to develop the singular resources of their small but beau- 
tiful land. 

The first exploit of David, after his final coronation, was the 
capture of the fortress of Jebus. With wonderful prescience, David 
coveted this stronghold to his capital, and began to fortify and en- 
rich the city which became the choice jewel of the world. A little 
later he undertook an expedition which is preserved for us in pro- 
fane history. Eupolemus and Nicholas of Damascus, the friend 
of Augustus Caesar, chronicle David’s conquest of the Syrians from 
Damascus. “ At the Euphrates,” says Nicholas, “ David of Judea 
fought and vanquished the monarch of Damascus ; who in the 
battle proved himself a most valiant king.” 

This victory probably confirmed Iliram, the monarch of Tyre, 
in his admiration of David, and his design of becoming his ally. 
Now Tyre, the gorgeous queen of the Mediterranean, first appears 
in sacred history. Hereafter this empress of the Levant moves 
through the record in her gold and purple an unchallenged splen- 
dor ; until withered by the curse of the prophets she shrinks back 
to her throne by the sea, and the chroniclers of the heathen show 
how the dwelling-place of her glory became a barren rock, where 
starveling fishers dry their nets. 

Hiram sent to David workmen and cedar wood to aid in build- 
ing palaces at Jerusalem. Right royal abodes rose as if by magic; 
the new metropolis became the rival of Tyre, Sidon, Damascus, 
and even Babylon, in beauty, though so far inferior to them in 
size. No city has stood such terrible sieges as Jerusalem. 


DAVID. 


277 


The religious idea largely predominated in every act of David ; 
and so as he began to beautify his new capital, he desired especially 
to make it sacred, and with many imposing ceremonies and general 
jubilation, he brought up the Ark and the Tabernacle and placed 
them there, that once more the people might have a centre of wor- 
ship, and come up together to keep their feasts and serve their 
Lord. 

David is one of those rare creatures who are unspoiled by pros- 
perity. Before his God he was as a child in happy humility. 
Laying aside the robes and insignia of royalty, in that spirit which 
inspired the words : “ I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house 
of the Lord than to dwell in the tents of wickedness,” David 
girded himself with a linen ephod and led the procession of priests 
and people, shouting, singing, and dancing “ before the Lord with 
all his might.” 

There are those who think it a sad sacrifice of their dignity to 
express an enthusiasm in the service of the Lord. Not thus felt 
the son of Jesse. 

After this David devoted himself to the internal organization 
of his kingdom. He arranged for the services of the Lord’s house ; 
this was his primary thought; he provided for the stated public 
worship of all the people ; for the administration of laws and preser- 
vation of order in every part of his dominion ; for the maintenance 
of the royal household and the standing army ; for commerce with 
nations near and far off. While the united empire lasted less than 
a century, this organization of its resources and the regular ad- 
ministration of court and camp remained until the final extinction 
of the monarchy. David became a king on the grand scale of 
the sovereigns of the Orient; like those of Egypt, Nineveh, Baby- 
lon and Tyre. He was the founder of a dynasty which was un- 
broken through every chance and change, until like an aloe tree 
it bloomed late and most beautiful, into Christ the Crown of hu- 
manity, very God and very man. 


278 


DAVID. 


Iii the record of David’s court we find the most polished civiliza- 
tion. Joab was the minister of war; Abishai the general ; Ahitho- 
phel and Jonathan were secretaries of state ; Hushai was chief 
councillor ; Adoram was minister of finance ; Shcva was keeper of 
the records ; Jehoshaphat was historian. He had revenue officers 
and boards of trade ! 

About him were envoys and ambassadors from neighboring 
powers, and Gad and Nathan stood in loftiest honor as ambassadors 
of the skies. 

The High Priest and his assistants upheld the rites and prin- 
ciples of religion, and David showed himself the “ man after God’s 
own heart,” in being a truly Theocratic king. He shunned the 
error of Saul, admitted and gloried in his vassalage to heaven, and 
took his orders from his Liege. Tribute to the Highest he never 
forgot to pay. The Lord’s tithes were gladly yielded by king and 
people, and all the gorgeous and solemn pageant of the Tabernacle 
service went on from week to week. 

Rational piety is the firmest support of lawful authority. In 
the heart of the people it is the pledge of loyalty, in the heart of 
the king it is the assurance of national safety. As all men ought 
indisputably to serve God, and as all states are moral persons, it 
is equally indisputable that all states, entire -nations in their na- 
tional -capacity, ought to serve Him. The original obligation of 
man to his Maker is not lost when man unites with his neighbors 
in forming a nation. The will of the nation is the result of the 
united will of the citizens, and remains subject' to the same laws 
which governed the separate individuals. As it is the duty of 
a nation to be pious, it is the duty of rulers to teach the nation 
piety. This can be done, and is only properly done, without a 
union of Church and State. 

David reached the true ideal of a righteous ruler ; in his example 
is a worshipper, his humility and zeal, he set forth the importance 


DAVID. 


279 


of righteousness to his people. And here, perhaps, it would be well 
to suggest that the greatest crime of David, as an individual, the 
one which brought down the heaviest judgment on his house, was 
probably known to but very few men of his own time. 

David not only set an example of a religious life, but he up- 
held such laws as should conserve religion among his people. 
While a ruler has no right to compel acceptance of any dogma, 
or prescribe the opinions of his people, he is under an obligation, 
laid upon him by his position, to make such laws as will further 
the interests of, and opportunities for, religious observance. For 
instance, it is the duty of the Executive to preserve the sanctity of 
the Sabbath, to stop the ordinary course of traffic and amusement, 
that there may be no interference with the religious exercises of 
those who wish to worship. 

David w’as a man after God’s own heart, because he knew so 
well how to be humble and repentant ; he was also a king after 
God’s own heart, because he remembered his allegiance to the King 
of kings; because he never perverted public justice; because he 
sought the good of his people; because he upheld religion in 
example and precept. 

The highest glory of David, however, lies, not in being king of 
Israel, but ancestor of the Messiah. This fact turns our thoughts 
to his family relations, and here unfortunately we see his most 
egregious errors, and his greatest woes. 

David in his family life committed two grand mistakes. The 
first was that he married many wives ; the second that he did not 
choose them from the daughters of the faith, but made marriages 
with idolatresses. We see the evil influence of this, not only in 
the distractions and family feuds which tormented even his dying 
bed, but in the effect of this example on Solomon, who followed 
his father’s ways until he himself fell into idolatry, and caused the 
division of the children of Jacob, and the destruction of the 
empire. 


280 


DAVID. 


David’s first wife was Michal, Saul’s daughter ; Saul took her 
from him, giving her to Phaltiel ; this was perhaps David’s ex- 
cuse for marrying Ahinoam of Jezreel, the mother of Amnon, his 
eldest and most wicked son. He next took the prudent and beau- 
tiful Abigail. These two shared the last years of his exile, and 
went with him to Hebron when he was made king of Judah. At 
Hebron he married four wives more ; probably to strengthen him- 
self in his kingdom, and to add, as was the custom of the day, to 
the lustre of his regal state, for the first wife whom he espoused in 
Hebron was the daughter of the king of Geshur ; in birth and 
beauty she was superior to the other wives, which probably is one 
reason for the audacity of her son Absalom. 

The Hebrew tradition is, that Eglah, the mother of David’s 
sixth son, Ithream, was no other than Michal whom Abner re- 
stored to him ; and therefore this Eglah is called in the narrative 
David's wife , as the first and lawful wife. The haughty daughter 
of Israel’s first king could not brook the presence of the other 
wives, nor the respect paid to Amnon as the eldest born son of 
David. Fourteen years of separation had turned her heart from 
one whom she regarded as her father’s rival, and perhaps she 
looked back with regret to Phaltiel, and her life east of the Jordan 
among her kindred. The bringing up of the Ark from the house 
of Obed Edom was made the occasion of a quarrel, which was never 
settled between David and Michal. 

In the strifes between these many wives and their children, and 
in the idolatry practised by some of them, the peace and piety of 
David’s household perished. 

The ardor of David’s zeal for religion, and his gratitude to God 
who had “ chosen him from the sheepfolds ” to be a king, were 
the sources of his wish to build for the ark and for sanctuary ser- 
vices a most glorious house, more rich and elaborate than the tem- 
ples of the heathen. “ See now,” said David to the prophet, “ I 


DAVID. 


281 


dwell in a house of cedar, but the Ark of God dwelleth between 
curtains.” His example might well be laid to heart. Christians 
are not unknown in these days, who never think that because their 
own dwellings are beautiful and costly, the church in which they 
worship should at least be decent ; they are content to sit out ser- 
vices, in a building which is a disgrace to the cause of Christianity, 
and be ministered to by a hapless man in a seedy coat, without a 
roof to live under. Let them remember David who thought that 
because he lived in a cedar house the ark should be at least as well 
sheltered. The fact is, in modern times, that because people live 
in so fine houses the house of God must often be left unprovided. 

For this pious wish and intention of David concerning the sanc- 
tuary, God greatly blessed him. “ Thine house and thy kingdom 
shall be established forever before thee; thy throne shall be estab- 
lished forever,” said Nathan to the king. 

On hearing this promise David went into the tabernacle “ and 
sat before the Lord.” His prayerful meditation is of singular 
beauty and devotion ; his humility appears so fair, even in the 
sight of men, that we can no longer wonder that “ Whoso hum- 
bleth himself shall be greatly exalted.” 

David during all his life maintained his eminence as a man of 
war. We may judge of the magnitude of his victories when we 
learn that at one time he captured a thousand chariots, seven hun- 
dred horsemen and twenty thousand footmen. At another time 
he slew in one campaign twenty-two thousand Syrians. Many 
kings became tributary to him and sent him gifts, and it is re- 
corded that David “ dedicated to the Lord ” the gold, silver and 
brass which he received from subject nations and from allies. This 
treasure was laid up for enriching the temple and filling its trea- 
sure rooms, so that for many generations these trophies of David 
became a vast reservoir from which his falling house drew succor ; 
thus returning to the heathen what had been taken from them and 
devoted to the Lord. 


232 


DAVID. 


David taught his people the art of war much more thoroughly 
than he taught his sons to be masters of their passions ; and this 
error was so great that it occasioned in a later reign the dismem- 
berment of the empire, and the misery and degradation of his 
descendants. 

•With Joab and Abishai to lead his armies ; and with Hushai 
and Ahithophel, “ whose counsel was as if a man had inquired at 
the oracle of God,” David reached the height of earthly power 
and magnificence ; there was never a more popular sovereign, and 
reasonably, for it is written of him, as can be written of few crowned 
heads, that he “ Executed judgment and justice unto all his. 
people.” 

In the narrative in Scripture we get one or two hints of the 
character of the man, which bring him clearly before us. He 
not only gives Saul and Jonathan royal burial, but he remem- 
bers his covenant with Jonathan, and seeks out Mephibosheth, 
setting him among his own sons and treating him as a royal 
prince. When Nahash of Ammon died, David in the kindness 
of his heart said : “ I will show kindness unto Hanun the son 
of Nahash, even as his father showed kindness unto me.” But 
it was an evil day for Ammon when they despised the envoys 
of David. In the ardor of battle David was so rash that his ser- 
vants finally insisted on his remaining at home, lest in some un- 
toward moment the hope and bulwark of the kingdom should fall 
in the person of its king. 

When Joab sent his messenger to tell of a repulse at Rabbah, 
he said to him : “ And if so be that the king’s wrath arise and 
he say unto thee, Wherefore approached ye so nigh the city when 
ye did fight ? knew ye not that they would shoot from the wall ? 
Who smote Abimelech the son of Jerubesheth ? did not a wo- 
man cast a piece of a millstone upon him from the wall, that he 
died in Thebez ? Why went ye nigh the wall ? ” We have a 


DAVID. 5283 

very complete picture of the king. We see the bold man versed 
in the history of his country, in the arts of war, and the annals 
of sieges ; firing up at thought of waste of his soldiers’ lives, and 
at the shame of defeat roundly reproving, and that with historical 
parallels, the failures of his generals. 

But for all this wisdom and strength and bravery, as David 
grew old, he has proved, as many another king has done, that 
there may be a power behind the throne, greater than the throne ; 
that the king may be the servant of some crafty mayor of the 
palace, or iron-handed head of the armies, and we hear him cry- 
ing out : “ The sons of Zeruiah are too strong for me ! ” 

We have now reached the grand tragedy of David’s life, from 
which came all the exceeding sorrows of his declining years. The 
blessing of the Lord had hitherto been about him like the nimbus 
of the gods ; now a sword should hang like that of Damocles, for- 
ever over his head, and over his household. 

The splendor of the conquest of the Ammonites half veiled a 
black and painful story from the eyes of men, but in all its shame 
it lay naked and open to the eye of God. David suddenly trampled 
upon that Divine law which he had cherished. Carried away by 
a mad passion he coveted his neighbor’s wife, and possessed him- 
self of her. 

Over the unfaithful spouse now hung the legal penalty of death ; 
and shame awaited David. To avoid these dire consequences he 
sacrificed the life of Uriah, and to conceal that murder, was forced 
to involve several soldiers in the brave captain’s fate. Greatly re- 
lieved at his escape from exposure and danger, David brought the 
beautiful Bathsheba to his palace, and she became his favorite wife. 

It was a crime such as was often committed by an Oriental des- 
pot, but should have been far indeed from the Lord's Anointed . 

We see in it an alarming fall from those days of David’s virtue, 
when his heart reproached him for having cut off the skirt of Saul’s 


284 


DAVID. 


mantle. Now he can cut off life, and that of his devoted friends, 
and feel no compunction until Nathan comes to him with his 
parable and its application : “Thou art the man !” 

Would that all ministers of God possessed Nathan’s tact, sin- 
cerity and moral courage. How eminently qualified was he to 
deal with the sinning and unrepentant heart. 

David pronounced judgment on himself under this guise of 
another. The man who hath done this thing shall die : “ He shall 
restore four fold.” 

“ The sword,” said Nathan, “ shall never depart from thy house.” 

The hearty penitence of David ; his humility under Nathan’s 
rebuke ; the anguish of his conscience at the thought that he, whom 
God had so richly blessed, had “ given the enemies of the Lord 
great occasion to blaspheme ; ” the exceeding grief which he feels 
when for his sin Bathsheba’s little babe lies dying on her knees; 
the coming of his household and friends about him to comfort him, 
are scenes that belong to David the beloved, David the Lord’s 
Anointed, not to the heathen kings whose sins he had copied. 
“ Four fold shall be restored,” had David said, and from his own 
sons he paid the price he named. The young child of Bathsheba 
was smitten of the Lord. The unwritten poetry of its little life 
should never grow to tragedy or epic ; it was only a lark’s song 
borne swiftly upward, and lost in the sunny spaces of the eternal 
morning. 

In the palace sat Bathsheba gazing with anguish and remorse 
at the marble face on her knee. In the corridors whispered the 
courtiers, fearing to tell the king that the child was gone. The 
eye of love is quick. David saw that vengeance had fallen, he 
bowed to the will of his God in a manner characteristic of himself, 
and comforted his heart, as many a parent since : “ I shall go tQ 
him, but he shall not return to me.” “ Four fold ” had David 
said ; this was but one reprisal, his own verdict was executed when 


DAVID. 


285 


Amnon fell in the hour of his pride by a brother’s hand: Amnon, 
the haughty elder born, whom even David seemed to fear ; Absa- 
lom, the beautiful and favored one, was cut off in his prime ; and 
Adonijah as a stirrer up of sedition was condemned to death ; thus 
the blood of Uriah was repaid four fold. 

In his Psalms, David poured forth his penitence, and before 
long he expressed in them the troubles of his house. For a brief 
time the birth of Solomon, long before predicted as his most illus- 
trious successor, threw a joy-beam on his path ; but presently fol- 
lowed the sin of Amnon, the disgrace of Tamar, famous among 
the virgins of Israel for her loveliness ; and then the brooding 
vengeance of Absalom. In two years more came the murder of 
Amnon and the expatriation of Absalom ; and then David for a 
long while pined for the son who was dead, and for him who was 
outlawed. It was five years before the breach was healed and 
Absalom saw his father’s face. In this time Solomon had doubt- 
less been publicly designated and honored as the heir of the king- 
dom. At the time of his reconciliation with Absalom, David was 
approaching sixty years of age. 

The story of the revolt of Absalom, his death, and David’s re- 
turn to the kingdom, will be treated in another article. We should, 
however, particularly notice the temper of David in his troubles. 
He takes his sorrows as a deserved chastisement from God, and 
they lead him to deeper and deeper repentance. He feels no 
enmity toward men, the instruments of the Divine wrath. When 
Shimei cursed, and Abishai, in loyal zeal for his unhappy king, 
wanted to take off the enemy’s head, David forbade it, saying 
pathetically : “ Behold my son seeketh my life ; how much more 
may this Benjamite dQ it? Let him alone, the Lord hath 
bidden Jrim.” 

When Zadok would carry out the ark to accompany the exile, 
David in noble faith says to him : “ Carry back the ark into the 


286 


DAVID. 


city ; if I find favor in the eyes of the Lord he will bring me back 
again and show me both it and his habitation. But if he say, I 
have no delight in thee ; behold here mi I, let *him do to me as 
seemeth him good.” Never was there a more complete example 
of humility before God, of entire submission to the Divine will. 

When Ittai would share his exile, David unselfishly advises 
him to remain and make peace with the new king. For all devo- 
tion and loyalty shown him he cherishes most profound gratitude, 
and toward Absalom he expresses the deepest paternal love, the 
most hearty forgiveness. In fact, in his trials the godly character 
of David shines out like fine gold. 

There was indeed in David’s life much of moral failure ; it is 
well, therefore, not to condemn him causelessly, as has by some been 
done for the death of Saul’s descendants, who were delivered to the 
Gibeonites. These Gibeonites, according to the lex talionis, had a 
right to demand blood. The death Saul had occasioned in their 
households must be recompensed by the blood of the house of 
Saul. David offered them blood money, a fine which they re- 
jected with scorn. There then remained, according to Jewish 
law, nothing for him to do but to give up to the avengers of blood 
the lives they demanded. This concession was needful for the 
national good, for now three years of famine had expressed the 
anger of the Lord against unchastized crime. Two of Saul’s sons 
by a concubine, and five sons of Merab , the sister of Michal, 
Saul’s grandsons, were the ordained victims. The text in Second 
Samuel gives Michal as the mother of the five doomed brothers, 
but every probability is that they were her nephews. The lonely 
watch of Rizpah on the hill by her beloved dead, is one of the 
most pathetic of pictures. It touched the gentle heart of David, 
and now that the manes of the slain Gibeonites were appeased, he 
gave the hapless children of an evil doer royal burial. 

Next great event in the history is a battle with the Philistines* 


DAVID. 


287 


where, as Philistines loved to do, they brought gigantic champions 
into the field, but, as ever, they fled before the prowess of David 
and Joab. 

Finally, we find David, the Theocratic king, rising up against 
his God, planning and executing for himself; opposing the ex- 
pressed will of his King. David not only made a sudden re- 
volt against the authority of God, but against the respectful 
domination of his warrior cousin, Joab. Hitherto he had felt 
himself obliged to wink at the great captain’s ill doings; now, 
for once, David persisted in his own way, and yet was wrong 
where Joab was right. 

The king showed the instinct of the man of war, relying on 
the numerical strength of a nation, where all who had grown to 
man’s estate had been practised in arms. He exhibited also the 
obstinacy of an old man in the execution of his design. 

Joab, when he obeyed David in numbering the people, obeyed, 
as was his eustom, rather as a matter of courtesy than necessity. 

After arguing the question, and finding the king resolute, he 
went out to number the nation; but as the order was “ abomina- 
ble” in his eyes, he counted only part of the tribes, leaving Levi 
and Benjamin out of the enumeration. In this affair, Joab 
seems to have had a true appreciation of David’s offence, the lack 
of faith displayed, and the imminent wrath of God. His answer 
to David is pertinent : “ The Lord make his people a hundred 
times as many more as they be. But are they not all my lord’s 
servants? Why will he be a cause of trespass to Israel? ” 

This census was evidently taken with a design of increasing 
the standing army, by forcing the people into military service. 
Hitherto the Hebrews had been numbered by the priests, who 
thus registered the joyous increase and prosperity of the house- 
hold of God. David sent the military leaders to take the 
statistics, and we can only infer from the narrative, that the act 


283 


DAVID. 


was repugnant alike to soldiers and civilians; probably being 
looked on as threatening the liberties of the people. 

Considered as an act of deliberate intention, of arbitrary <power, 
and of failing faith, it is the most reprehensible of David’s reign, 
savoring more of Saul and Rehoboam, than David, the beloved 
of the Lord. 

As the work of numbering went on, mark? of Divine indigna- 
tion alarmed Joab and his assistant captains, and stirred the easily 
awakened conscience of the king. We hear him crying, not as 
Saul, or Pharaoh, or Judas, but in David’s own hearty, thoroughly 
repentant tone : “ I have sinned greatly, because I have done this 
thing. Now I beseech thee, do away the iniquity of thy servant, 
for I have done very foolishly.” 

David’s childlike spirit is continually revealing itself ; never 
did he leave a better portraiture of himself, a more perfect 
spiritual photograph, than in the soft cadences of his Psalm : 

“ Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is 
weaned of his mother : my soul is even as a weaned child ! ” 

This humble casting of himself upon the Lord is again speedily 
shown when God goes to David, offering him his choice of three 
evils. War, famine, pestilence — a terrible trio. David pondered ; 
in vision he saw the troops of his foes for three months ravaging 
beauteous Palestine, and revenging themselves of David’s forty 
years of victories. Then another picture rose: three rainless 
years; a parched earth, and a brazen sky; dry water courses; 
lean, fevered flocks and herds; leafless trees ; fields unsown ; the 
black, wan, haggard faces of men, women and babes, looking 
curses on their king ! 

Again, a picture of terror — the sweep of the pestilence through 
the once happy realm. Cries from every house; the winding of 
burial trains over all the verdant champaign ; the hill-sides 
black with those who buried the dead in rock-hewn tombs; 


DAVID. 


289 


depopulated cities ; grass grown villages, where once had lived 
and been happy the peasant subjects; the royal palace half empty; 
friends, kindred, children, wives, dead for David's sin, himself 
walking alone amid the ruin he had wrought, feeling himself a 
murderer! No wonder that he cried out to God: “ I am in a 
great strait. Let me now fall into the hand of the Lord ; for very 
great are his mercies ; but let me not fall into the hand of man." 

David had lived long enough to distrust his race ! The choice 
of the Lord for David was a pestilence. In three days, seventy 
thousand men of Israel had perished of this horrible visitation. 

Joab had returned to the king lists of five million two hundred 
thousand souls, according to the usual proportions of population. 
That is, he had found one million three hundred thousand adult 
males, without enumerating Levi and Benjamin, both large tribes. 
There must, therefore, have been a population of at least six 
millions of all ages. 

When we read of the frightful ravages of this plague that fell 
upon the people, we are inclined with our usual haste to accuse 
the Lord of injustice in this chastisement; as if he visited upon 
the innocent the guilt of the guilty. It is, therefore, advisable to 
stay for one moment to inquire into the guilt of the nation in this 
matter. 

Let us first consider that the people of Israel, having entered 
into a covenant with God as their Sovereign, owed their first 
allegiance to him, and to the laws of his kingdom. They were 
bound to behold their earthly monarch simply as the viceroy of 
the Heavenly Ruler, and to yield their first obedience to the 
higher law. They were covenanted to see to.it, that their king 
did not exceed his delegated authority. Therefore, the people, 
with one consent, should have prohibited the numbering ; and in 
yielding to it, they had aided the satrap to revolt against the fixed 

decree of his liege lord. 

19 


290 


DAVID. 


Again, the law of Moses was: “When thou takest the sum 
of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they give 
every man a ransom for his soul unto the Lord, when thou 
numberest them, that there be no plague amongst them when thou 
numberest them.” 

This last clause is worthy of especial attention. When David 
sent by the hand of Joab to number the people, he did not 
provide for the collection of the soul ransom. This was his sin. 
His neglect did not relieve the people of the duty of paying their 
ransom to the priests at the Tabernacle ; that they failed to do it, 
was their sin. 

And here let us add, that the guilt of sustaining a ruler in 
legislation opposed to Divine law is characteristic of ungodly 
nations, ahd is a grand cause of their disintegration. 

Nations are punished for the sins of their wicked rulers, 
because they support their rulers in their sins. People should 
obey their rulers in the Lord , just as children should obey their 
parents in the Lord. 

Family government is the primary type of all government; the 
household is the original root of the State, and child and subject 
owe their first duty to the Lord, and to parents and rulers, in the 
Lord, and not one whit outside of his laws and ordinances. 

Let a king or a governor trample on the constitutions and 
charters by which men have hemmed in his power, and the most 
probable result will be a great popular rising and protest. Let 
the king or governor trample on the Divine law, and people are 
very sorry — some of them; but in effect shrug their shoulders, 
get about their business, and cry, “ Let Baal plead ! ” 

Then the Lord does plead his cause, but as he did to Israel, 
with the rod of his wrath. 

Catherine de Medicis and her effete son held a Bartholomew, at 
which France trembled ; but the French, as a people, never dis- 
allowed that act. 


DAVID. 


291 


In 1871, the Lord began his reprisals, and held His Bartho- 
lomew, at which all the world stood aghast, crying : “ Behold the 
bloody city ! ” 

The scene where the Angel of Destruction stands in midheaven 
with his drawn sword in his hand to smite Jerusalem, and the 
Lord from his central Throne repents of the evil, and cries in his 
compassion : “ It is enough, stay now thy hand,” has its parallel 
only in Apocalyptic ecstasy. Then David and his court, then 
Araunah the Jebusite, and his four sons, saw the Heavenly vision ; 
then was consecrated with prayer and acceptable sacrifices that 
Holy Mount whereon the Temple was to stand ; becoming from 
the hour when Israel’s plague was stayed, a place sacred in the 
eyes of men and angels. At that moment, the Sun of Righteous- 
ness, delaying so long his coming, shot a herald ray across the 
night of the ages, and kissed into glory the hill of Zion. 

David had now reached his seventieth year. He had reigned 
forty years, and long toils and cares had worn his mind and 
body. As he crouched in his palace in the chilliness and languor 
of age, the reins of government dropped from his numb fingers. 
Adonijah, his fourth son, and probably the eldest then surviving, 
a man possessed of beauty, tact and ambition, like Absalom’s, 
determined to possess himself of the kingdom in time to crush the 
claims of the youthful Solomon, then about twenty years of age. 

Joab, who had so long maintained the cause of David in glory 
and adversity, was drawn into this rebellion, as was Abiathar the 
priest. 

The prudent counsel of Nathan the prophet, and the energy of 
Bathsheba, mother of the heir apparent, frustrated the attempt of 
Adonijah. These two, with Zadok and Solomon, roused the 
energy of David to its olden vigor. Once more he could plan 
wisely, and execute suddenly. He at once provided for the coro- 
nation of Solomon, and abdicated in his favor. It was the last 


292 


DAVID. 


flicker of expiring strength. When Solomon, the goodly and 
gracious youth, was established in his kingdom, David felt that 
his own hour had come to die. 

He survived the coronation of Solomon but six months. On 
his dying bed, the wise old king gave his successor various 
charges, which showed his acute reading of character, and his 
far-seeing policy. Various acts of justice which, in his age, he had 
been too feeble to perform, he left as a legacy to his royal son. 

It was the great misfortune of some of David’s enemies that 
they survived him ; had they died sooner, they would have died 
easier ! 

When his last charge was given to Solomon, this noblest of 
monarchs left an heirloom to all men who should be kings after 
him. Had all the sovereigns of earth regarded and cherished it 
as their best crown jewel, their annals would not so frequently 
have been written in blood and tears ; crowned heads would less 
often have fallen on the scaffold ; royal hearts would not have 
been pierced by the assassin’s knife. 

“ The anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet Psalmist of 
Israel said: He that ruleth overmen must be just, ruling in 
the fear of the Lord. And he shall be as the light of the morn- 
ing when the sun riseth, even as a morning without clouds.” 

But however interesting the varied record of David’s life, it is 
his ethical history which especially commends itself to us, after 
all these years. Here is a Saint who conducts himself more vilely 
than many sinners. What then is a Saint ; what is a sinner ? 

A Saint is a free moral agent, whose standard of duty is the 
Divine law, and who desires to perform that duty. He is one in 
whom the dispositions and intentions which lie anterior to moral 
action, run in the channel of the will of God. He is subject to 
moral and mediate influences of grace on the will, which are 
common to all men ; these influences we find the Saint of God on 


DAVID. 


293 


earth, at times resisting through the law of sin remaining in him. 
But there acts within him another influence of grace, which is 
most efficacious, because it carries the will spontaneously with it ; 
and so he desires to obey God ; he feels and acknowledges his 
errors, repents and forsakes them, and does not quarrel with his 
Maker on account of bitter, personal retributions which flow from 
them. 

What is a Sinner ? He is one whose permanent habit or state 
of mind is aversion from God. He has an absence of right dis- 
positions toward God, which, in the onward sweep, the momentum 
of the spiritual nature presses him into absolutely wrong an * 1 
sinful dispositions toward God. It is the disposition toward God 
which makes the moral character of a man, and by which he will 
finally be judged. 

The right or wrong of an act rests not in the outward develop- 
ment, but in the actual intention. 

This is an ethical principle, which lies at the base of all civil 
law; of all our judgments of our fellows; and is the foundation 
principle of God’s government. 

From some predominance of caution, of prudence, of coolness 
of passion, of selfishness, self-control, or ambition, the man whose 
heart is all wrong toward God, may maintain a greater propriety 
of demeanor than his neighbor who loves God with all his heart, 
and falls at his feet in an agony of remorse for the errors into 
which indwelling sin has betrayed him. For this let not the 
godless moralist plume himself. His superiority will last him 
just long enough to be written on his tombstone : — 

- “ Thrust high to whiten in the graveyard sun.” 

But on that dread day of assize to which all other days are 
tending as waters toward the ocean, God will sweep aside all 
sophistries, and will cut to the root of all acts, with sole eye to the 
thoughts and intents of the heart. 


XIV. 


ABSALOM. 

man’s capacity for failure. 

F there is one thing which has been thoroughly developed 
in the history of the human race, it is man’s capacity 
for doing ill whatsoever he undertakes. Failure is the 
rule ; success the exception. It seems a hard sentence to 
pass on humanity, but it is the verdict compelled by the testimony 
of six thousand years, each one of which comes up to the tribunal 
of investigation, and bears witness with uplifted hands, that man’s 
capacity for failure is his predominent characteristic. 

God put man in Eden, and he failed to keep it. He was turned 
out into the world, and instruction and encouragement in the 
way of righteousness were given him, but he failed to pursue holi- 
ness, and the flood washed the earth clear of its iniquities and 
presented it a fair page whereon man might write the story of his 
future • that story was failure, as far as man could compass it. 

In building up nations, in making laws, in advancing culture, 
man has failed again and again, and has reached success only 
over multiplied disasters. That general is called most able in the 
art of war who knows how to use a defeat. The Christian is 
that man among other men, who knows how to reach eternal vic- 
tories through his present failures, who climbs to heaven on the 
ruins of his best designs. 

In religion, which is the highest theme man can reach, he has 
294 



ABSALOM. 


295 


made his most egregious blunders. Set a man to alter, or fashion, 
a religion to suit himself, and alas, poor wretch, he makes one 
which is not fit to live by, nor fit to die by ! 

He is like one who has built a house so pervious to wind, sun 
and rain, that it would only be an endurable dwelling — provided 
it did not have to st&nd out of doors ! 

God has mercifully taken the making of a religion out of man’s 
hands, and man is left to some other field for the display of his 
chief ability. 

No where has the capacity for failure been more broadly mani- 
fested than in domestic government, in the training of children. Here 
some of the best people have made prodigious mistakes. There 
have been some most magnificent theories, some most miserable 
practice. The promises of our God to faithful parents are im- 
mutable ; but there have never been promises so maligned, misin- 
terpreted and despised as these. Men seem able to believe almost 
anything but that, if their children are covenanted to God, and are 
trained for God, they will indubitably belong to God and be owned 
by him. 

Men forget that they must be faithful in act and in feeling ; 
they must be faithful to their children, and have faith in God. 
To demand an absolutely perfect management, is to predicate the 
absolute perfection of the parent. What God requires is a hearty 
endeavor to train the children for heaven, .and an implicit, un- 
questioning reliance on his promise. Here, above all, will we be 
dealt with in the measure of our faith : “ According to your faith 
be it unto you.” If faith makes solemn covenant with God for 
the new-born soul, then, though from ignorance, men may fail in 
outward act, the Lord will not fail, and he will “ supply all our 
need ; ” “ make up our lack of service.” 

David, the glorious king of Israel, made his grand failures in 
life in the rearing of his numerous children ; he brought them up 


296 


ABSALOM. 


to be his curse. “ The evil that men do lives after them.” David’s 
mistakes survived him to ruin his empire. In Germany the field 
of blood became a field of flowers, where crimson poppies grew a 
mass of bloom above the bodies of the slain — beauty was the heir 
of death. David’s lot was to bring ruin after glory ; the beauty 
of his own life and reign was followed by the sins and miseries of 
his children ; by means of them the fair and fertile land of Pales- 
tine became an Aceldama. David lived to see but part of this 
ruin. The course of Absalom weighed down the old king’s de- 
clining years with sorrow, and the story of David and his son has 
become a landmark for the ages. 

David’s mistake began, like that of many another man, in his 
marriage. He had many wives, and he chose them rather because 
they were pleasing to his own eyes, than in the eyes of God. As 
the first error of David, his polygamy, is not the danger of the 
present day, we pass it by, to dwell on the thought of the danger 
arising from irreligious marriages. 

Godliness should ever be the foundation of the family. God 
united in Eden a pair whose faces were set toward immortal holi- 
ness and happiness, alike his children, into whose joint home his 
presence came — who, fallen and driven from the Paradisaic gate, 
cherished still the worship of the Eternal, and waited for the coming 
Christ. 

The man or woman who, professing righteousness, makes a mar- 
riage with one who neglects godliness, has started most likely a 
wave of evil which will widen and widen with all the widening 
ages of eternity. Godless marriages have peopled hell. 

Learn, young men and maidens, as from a parable, from the 
early story of our earth. When the sons of God united with 
the children of men, there came a race of giants that were not 
of the race of heaven. When the sanctity of the household was 
desecrated by a union of God’s friends and foes, irreligion spread 


ABSALOM. 


297 


abroad, type and precursor of the flood, and the world was 
doomed. 

Soon after his coronation at Hebron, David espoused the daughter 
of the king of Geshur ; she was Maacah, an idolatress. Doubt- 
less her beauty as well as her gentle birth attracted David, for 
we find frequent mention of the loveliness of her two children, 
Absalom and Tamar. 

We infer that she maintained frequent intercourse with her 
own kindred, because when Absalom lies under his father’s dis- 
pleasure he promptly takes refuge with his maternal grandparents, 
and is well received. 

In considering the history of Absalom we must recognize three 
facts : First, that in Oriental nations the sons were heirs according 
to the estate of their father at the time of their birth. If a man 
had children before he came to a throne, those children were heirs 
of their parents’ private station ; and a son born to him in the 
kingdom was preferred as the inheritor of the crown. This 
was a common but not invariable custom. 

Next, it must be remembered that where there is a plurality 
of wives, the rank of the mother in her own right has much to 
do with the future of her child; a woman nobly born, then, 
expects that her son shall take precedence of his elder half-brothers, 
whose mothers may be of plebeian extraction. This feeling is 
dominant in Oriental nations in the present day. For example, 
in Persia, Abbas Meerza was, during the present generation, pre- 
ferred to the throne, because his mother was nobly descended, 
while the mother of his elder brother was a merchant’s daughter; 
and the reason was deemed a legitimate one in all the Orient. 

Again, we must notice that the throne of Israel was not a 
hereditament to be left by law of primogeniture, or by Eastern 
custom ; it was a fief of Heaven, and the Lord claimed and exer- 
cised the right of nominating a successor, each time that the 
reigning life lapsed. 


298 


ABSALOM. 


The claims on the Throne of David were these — Amnon, the 
first-born, expected it from his position in the family, claiming 
the honors of the eldest son. 

Chileab, the second son, probably died in childhood. 

Absalom, the third child, based his claim on two strong points ; 
first, that, on his mother’s side, he was royal ; and second, that 
he was to be preferred to Amnon, because Amnon was born when 
David was a private individual, and Absalom when his father 
was a crowned king. 

When Amnon and Absalom were dead, Adonijah claimed the 
succession as the eldest son living, and as having been born after 
David was made a king. Finally Solomon could urge the 
superior plea that he was born to the united kingdom, after his 
father reigned over Israel and Judah, while Adonijah at best 
could only plead a sovereignty over Judah. Besides, Solomon 
was the divinely appointed Theocratic king. Jehovah had the 
right to dispose of the royalty of Israel, and He gave it to 
Solomon. 

At the time of Absalom’s rebellion, Adonijah may never have 
pressed his claim ; but Absalom knew perfectly well the inten- 
tions of David concerning Solomon, and the reasons for those 
intentions. 

As far as David himself was considered, if the choice had been 
left to his love, he would most likely have bestowed the splendid 
and coveted inheritance on Absalom, whom he loved with extra- 
ordinary fervor. This was peculiarly likely to have been the 
case after the death of the arrogant Amnon, who had a certain 
prestige as the first-born. 

The culpable indulgence of David to his children is very 
plainly exhibited in Scripture. In all their follies, they proceeded 
unchecked. 

When they sinned with a high hand, he failed even to reprove, 


ABSALOM. 


299 


much less to inflict the penalty of the Jewish law — a law which 
was made by the king’s King, and which David and all his sub- 
jects were equally bound to obey. 

Amnon, for the forcible injury he inflicted on his unhappy 
sister, was, by Mosaic law, guilty of death. David, as a king, if 
not as a father, was bound to avenge the wronged ; but though 
“ very wroth,” took no action in the matter whatsoever. 

When Absalom slew Amnon, Jewish law ordained the shedder 
of blood to death, but after a time David received his son into 
full favor. 

When later in the reign, Adonijah began to assume royal state, 
and indulge in great extravagance, having horses and chariots and 
runners ; David offered no remonstrance, but permitted him in 
everything to take his own way. 

We see that early in life, David gave his sons separate estab- 
lishments, and abundant means of support. Amnon and Absalom 
had houses of their own ; and Absalom had an estate at Baal- 
hazor, 'where he made a grand sheep-shearing festival, which 
seemed a not unusual occurrence. At this time, these sons could 
not have been much more than twenty-one years of age. 

Absalom was famous for his beauty, his grace, and an urbane 
manner, highly prized in the courteous East. He displays many 
admirable, and many evil traits of character. Naturally, he was 
fitted to delight the Israelites. Beautiful, artful, daring, ambi- 
tious, high spirited, lavish in display, fluent of speech, warm in 
all his feelings, his animus was the animus of the Jewish nation. 

We hear little of Absalom until after the sin of Amnon. Then 
we see him cherishing his unhappy sister with a brother’s tender 
love. By eastern custom, a brother by the same mother is a 
woman’s natural protector, even in preference to the many-wived 
father. Absalom was Tamar’s legitimate defender, and having 
received her into his home he consoled, and prepared to avenge her. 


300 


ABSALOM. 


That he possessed a very tender love for his sister, we see in 
his naming for her his only daughter, who heired the fatal 
beauty of her aunt and father, but achieved a happier destiny, 
and was mother of one of the queens of Israel. Besides this 
daughter “ of a fair countenance,” there were born to Absalom 
three sons, who died early. 

Absalom finding himself without an heir to keep his name in 
remembrance, buried his children in the King’s Dale, which was, 
perhaps, among his possessions ; and set up over them a grand 
pillar or monument, intending to be buried by it himself, and 
expecting the tall and costly structure to hold in the memory of 
the nation, Absalom, the peerless in beauty, who had, “ from the 
crown of his head to the sole of his foot, no blemish in him.” 

Tlie King’s Dale was memorable in Jewish history as the place 
where the king of Sodom met Abraham, after the slaughter of 
Chedorlaomer, and where Melchizedek came out with bread and 
wine to bless the victorious patriarch. 

The pillar of Absalom became one of the many memorials of 
human failure. It told the story of a ruined house and perverted 
life. Gloriously as was Absalom endowed by nature ; popular as 
he was among the people, he might, if he had cultivated the 
virtues of his father, have become the greatest general, or minister 
of state, in Israel. Instead of being remembered only as a rebel 
subject; an ungrateful son; a would-be parricide; a man stained 
with a brother’s blood, he might have shone in history a worthy 
son of David, and brother of Solomon. It is painful to remem- 
ber that laxity of parental rule served to encourage the evil and 
check the good in the character of Absalom. 

The silence of David over the crime of Amnon awoke a sullen 
anger in the soul of Absalom. Suddenly the love of the brother 
and the son became antagonistic. The chivalry of Absalom fixed 
him on the side of the wronged woman, rather than of the 


ABSALOM. 


301 


powerful king. During the two years in which he cherished rage 
against Amnon, his heart first grew cold, and then opposed to his 
royal father. 

, The sons of David had a very evil counsellor in Jonadab, 
their cousin — a son of David’s brother Shimeah, called in 
Scripture a (C very subtile man.” This Jonadab it was who 
encouraged Amnon in his crime, and was the silent confidant of 
Absalom’s revenge. 

When the servants of Absalom fell upon Amnon, the other 
brothers sitting at his feast imagined that this was an attempt to 
destroy the seed royal, and secure the reversion of the crown, a 
proceeding not unprecedented in the Orient; therefore being 
unarmed, they fled in haste. 

The ill news flew fast, and gathered terrors as it went. Instead 
of the murder of the eldest son, David heard that all the princes 
had been assassinated ; thus rumor grows. 

“ viresque acquirit eundo : 

Parva metu primo : mox sese attollit in auras, 

Ingrediturque sol >, et caput inter nubila condit.” 

Hearing such frightful news, David arose, rent his garments, 
and flung himself weeping on the earth, while all the court stood 
about him with marks of woe, bewailing the ruin of the hopes of 
the empire. 

Here the crafty Jonadab, who had known and concealed the 
plot, came in with the cool remark : “ Let not my lord the king 
suppose that they have slain all the young men, the king’s sons ; 
for Amnon only is dead: for by appointment of Absalom, this 
hath been determined from the day that he forced his sister 
Tamar. Now, therefore, let not my lord the king take the thing 
to heart.” 

Meanwhile, his plot executed, Absalom made all speed to the 
protection of his maternal grandfather at Geshur. The watch- 


302 


ABSALOM. 


man on the palace tower presently saw a train of people pressing 
toward the city. They came in disorder, with dishevelled locks, 
torn and dusty garments, and affrighted faces. They were the 
princes, of Judah and their attendants; mere boys many of them, 
having but lately left the innocent seclusion of their mothers’ 
apartments in the royal harem. 

“ Behold,” said the matter of fact Jonadab, " as thy servant 
said, so it is.” He had a singular idea of consolation, bringing it 
in the news that one son was a murderer and an outlaw, and 
another was murdered, cut off — 

“ grossly, full of bread ; 

With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May, 

And how his audit stands, who knows, save Heaven ? ” 

The princes hurried into the presence of their father, and tell- 
ing their tragic tale “ wept ; and the king and all his servants 
wept very sore.” 

What a beautiful touch of nature comes in this narrative : 
“ And David mourned for his son every day. And the soul of 
king David longed to go forth to Absalom ; for he was comforted 
concerning Amnon, seeing that he was dead.” 

The father submitted himself to the inevitable ; Amnon he could 
not bring back from the shadows of death ; but he yearned to call 
from Geshur that goodly prince Absalom, his favorite son — a man 
like Saul in heart and person, like Saul, alas, loved all too well ! 

The plan by which Joab gratified the secret wish of his royal 
cousin and secured the return of Absalom is detailed in Scripture 
at great length. It is given so much importance, in order to ex- 
hibit a fact, which we seem more and more inclined to ignore : 
namely, that the plan of salvation was fully developed and under- 
stood before Christ. • God preached a full gospel to men from the 
time ' of Abel, and if from the time of Abel, doubtless also from 
the time of the exile from Eden. The terms of salvation are for- 


ABSALOM. 


303 


ever the same, and God made them known freely in every age to 
men. 

J oab was an able and headstrong soldier ; there is not the least 
reason to suppose that he shone as a theologian, or had unusual re- 
ligious light ; he knew what all the people knew, and no more. 
The wise woman of Tekoah, called to the aid of this rough war- 
rior, was no prophetess, and probably not without her peer among 
the women of Israel. But these two, warrior and woman, laid 
the scheme of Redemption fairly before David ; recalling what he 
knew of God’s dealings, and exhorting him to follow in the foot- 
steps of the King of kings. “ For we must needs die, and are as 
water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again ; 
neither doth God respect any person ; yet doth he devise means 
that his banished be not expelled from him.” 

For two years after the return of Absalom David refused to 
admit him to his presence. During this time Absalom’s secret 
hostility increased. He mused with himself that David had not 
refused his countenance to Amnon even when he had committed 
a crime worthy of death ; but now that Absalom, avenging his 
sister’s honor, had executed on his brother the sentence of the 
Mosaic law, David ^ forbade him his presence. Absalom’s anger 
gathered intensity from the fact that Solomon was now set before 
all the other princes as heir to the throne, a position which the 
ambitious Absalom claimed as his right. 

There has here crept into our Scripture text a gross corruption. 
In Second Samuel we read, “ after forty years ” it came to pass, etc. 
It cannot be that this means after forty years of David’s reign, for 
the whole reign was but forty years, and Absalom’s rebellion was 
some time before the close of the reign. But it is still more absurd 
to consider that the forty years date from the last event, to wit, 
the reconciliation, for Absalom at his death is called a young man , 
and if he plotted forty years he would have been over sixty when 


304 


ABSAL< )M. 


he died in battle ; besides, the suggestion of the whole length of 
David’s monarchy, which is given with exactness in several places, 
applies here. Josephus doubtless gives us the exact chronology ; 
he says that Absalom plotted for four years after his reconciliation 
with his father. With this coincide the Septuagint version, and 
the Armenian translation. 

The history of Absalom’s treason shows us the work of a very 
crafty man, one who knew well how to manage men and take ad- 
vantage of every weakness of the human heart. He stole away 
the love of the nation ; he simulated piety, justice, energy, business 
diligence. While the old king rested late in his palace, and men 
waited at his gate for justice, Absalom rose early, sat in a public 
place, heard causes with brotherly interest, and greeted petitioners 
with the kiss of peace. His manner of leaving the city, and 
taking with him two hundred men, perhaps royal guards, who 
“ went in the simplicity of their hearts not knowing anything,” 
shows us the depths of his guile. Craft was a family trait 
among the descendants of Jesse. Absalom was cousin of Jonadab 
who advised Amnon ; cousin of Joab who planned with the wo- 
man of Tekoah ; son of David who beguiled Achish twice, once 
as insane, once as a pretended friend ! 

We cannot readily understand how the revolt of Absalom should 
gain head so rapidly under a government so popular and powerful 
as that of David. We have to recall, first, that this rebellion 
was part of the punishment of David for his sin against Uriah. 
Very likely also, as David grew old he grew feeble and forgetful 
of that exact justice which he had once rejoiced to mete out 
among his subjects ; and was less able to hear those civil causes 
which occupy so large a portion of the time of an Eastern 
monarch. Absalom was so attractive, so outwardly congenial to 
the Israelitish spirit, that he captivated their affection ; and, be- 
sides this, they looked on him as the lawful heir. From his going 


ABSALOM. 


305 


to Hebron, we divine that as David had sought to conciliate all 
Israel, the haughty tribe of Judah felt that under his rule they 
lost much of their supremacy ; they did not wish to be merged 
into a nation on an equality with the lesser tribes; the king be- 
longed to them, and they wanted him to realize it, and treat them 
with especial honor. After the battle, we see David recognizing 
the secret animosity of Judah in his message to them: “Ye are 
my brethren, ye are my bones and my flesh ; wherefore then are 
ye the last to bring back the king ? ” 

“ The conspiracy was strong.” “ The people increased con- 
tinually to Absalom.” 

David had no safety but in flight. He went forth from the cii!y 
with his household ; from that beloved capital where he had 
reigned so long and well, and been so happy and so honored. 
From the fortress which he had captured by his warlike arm; 
from the palace Hiram built him as a pledge of peace ; from ithe 
ark and tabernacle of his God, went the gray king and his house- 
hold, weeping toward the wilderness, fleeing from that idolised 
and parricidal son. 

Absalom coming, mad with triumph and gratified ambition, to 
Jerusalem, was met by Hushai, who cried lustily : “ God save the 
king ! ” 

Hushai was David’s bosom friend, and Absalom saw the incon- 
gruity between his past professions and his present attitude. He 
said, sneeringly: “Is this thy kindness to thy friend? Why 
wentest thou not with thy friend ? ” 

Here was Satan reproving sin, most assuredly. The reply of . 
Hushai was a very triumph of sophistry ; it beguiled the artful 
Absalom, and saved the Throne of David. 

The deliberate intention of Absalom was to kill his father. 
That counsel was most pleasing to him which tended toward this 
end. When we compare the son’s deadly, bitter, settled hate, 
20 


306 


ABSALOM. 


with the father’s yearning love, for “ the young man Absalom,” 

“ the son Absalom,” for whom he mourned and longed for five 
dreary years of absence, the blackness of that son’s ingratitude 
comes clearly before us. 

Here began a fearful civil war. Father against son ; Hebrew 
pitted against Hebrew ; dark weight of sin was on the soul of 
Absalom, who sowed this discord over all the smiling land. 

Absalom headed his army in a parricidal fury : thirsty, like a 
wild beast, for blood. 

David, on the contrary, stood at the gate of Mahanaim, and as 
the troops filed past him, uncovered and looking with more than 
filial love on their cherished king, he said to each band earnestly : 
“Deal gently, for my sake, with the young man, even with 
Absalom ! ” 

The army wound out of sight, going to the battle field in the 
great plain, hard by the forest of Ephraim. 

David, with his few attendants, was left in the city, to await 
the issue of the day. He stood by the double gates of famous 
Mahanaim, where Jacob had met the Hosts of God. It was a 
Levitical city, of much sanctity and importance, well fortified ; 
and here Ishbosheth had lived out his short and feeble reign. 

Fatal was that day to Absalom. The blessing of the Lord 
never rested on the undutiful son. 

David had respected the Lord’s anointed when he was a 
stranger and a deadly foe ; Absalom had armed himself against his 
lawful sovereign, his too indulgent father: 

The adherents of the prince were sorely defeated. The battle 
field proved ill chosen for them ; “ the wood devoured more that 
day than the sword.” 

Flving from the lost field, Absalom dashed under the low 
branches of an oak or terebinth tree, and was dragged from his 
mule, the favorite riding animal of kings and princes in those 


ABSALOM. 


307 . 

days. The affrighted beast rushed on with the rout of the fugi- 
tives, and Absalom was left suspended — u taken up between 
heaven and earth.” 

Here he was seen by one who loved David too well to slay 
Absalom, yet hated Absalom too sorely to rescue him. This 
soldier went and told Joab how Absalom was held. captive. 

The unscrupulous captain quickly demanded : u Why didst 
thou not smite him? I would have given thee ten shekels of 
silver and a girdle.” 

“ Though I should receive a thousand shekels,” quoth the 
honest soldier, “ I would not put forth my hand against the 
king’s son.” And added : “ I should then have wrought against 
my own life, and thou thyself wouldst have set thyself against 
me.” 

It gives us a fine idea of the estimation set by an honest fellow 
on the probity of general Joab ! 

The great captain felt the thrust, and could not deny the charge. 
He turned on his heel, saying : “ I cannot tarry thus with thee.” 

The argumcntum ad hominem is apt to call to mind a press of 
business ! 

Accompanied by his staff, “ ten young men, who bare Joab’s 
armor,” Joab hastened to the oak tree, and struck three darts 
through the heart of the living Absalom, his beautiful and wicked 
cousin. The young men hacked the hanging body with their 
weapons ; then dragged it to the ground, and, as at the call of 
Joab’s trumpet the victorious army crowded back from the pur- 
suit, they cast Absalom’s body in a pit, and covered it with a 
great heap of wood and stones, like the burial of Achan. He was 
fated not to lie under his lofty pillar in the King’s Dale. 

Thus ended a life of failure — failure begun by a parent, 
completed by his child. Foolish indulgence on David’s part, 
gross ingratitude — the chief characteristic of the pampered child — 


308 


ABSALOM. 


on Absalom’s part, making together a tragedy such as has seldom 
been paralleled. 

Doubtless with Absalom perished the happiness of David’s life. 
When he wept, “ O Absalom, my son, my son Absalom ! Would 
God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son,” his heart 
had gone down into Absalom’s dishonored grave. 

Joab’s sound rebuke roused him from the exhibition of his 
intense grief, but sorrow so deep does not soon pass out of an old 
man’s life. The young may find other loves and other joys ; but 
when gray hairs come, grief eats into the heart, and cannot be 
driven out of it. 

Like Jacob, David could say, “ I will go down into the grave 
to my son mourning.” And probably, as over his loss arose no 
golden morning of restoration as was Jacob’s case, he did so go 
down. His was the mourning for eternal as well- as temporal 
death. What worse fate than that of Absalom, — 

u Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, 

Unliousel’d, disappointed, unanel’d ; 

No reckoning made, but sent to my account, 

With all my imperfections on my head.” 


XV. 


SOLOMON. 

heaven’s expositor of the world. 


O man has ever so thoroughly impressed himself upon the 
$ j! I history of the world as Solomon, the son of David, 
e ^ His name lives in all the most glowing legends of the 
glowing East. 

Jew, Christian, and Mahommedan hold his name in loftiest 
honor. Persian, Hindoo, African, Egyptian, Arabian and Euro- 
pean, entwine his character in their most fantastic tales. We 
have the gross superstitions of the Saxon, the Teuton, and the 
Gaul, setting him forth as the chief of magicians, the leading 
figure in a wild Apocrypha. The Jewish Targum shows him 
foisting with Rabbis, and teaching them wonderful arts. The 
Hindoo tells us of spirits and charms, and power to heal disease; 
a paradise of palms, and cinnamon groves, goblin planted. In 
tli 3 desolation of the desert, the Bedouin breaks the silence of the 
bivouac with some weird romance of Solomon, who imprisoned 
the Afrites, and cast them into the sea; who wore the magic 
ring ; to whom, for his piety’s sake, God had given the winds as 
a chariot, and flying birds as a canopy. 

In the hot depths of some African forest, the traveller, or 
missionary, is startled by a name with familiar syllables, and 
hears of him, whose ivory throne was the shrine of Sheba’s queen. 

He who seeks Persepolis is told that the Jinm built it for 

309 


310 


SOLOMON. 


Solomon ; and at Shiraz, one is led to the tomb of Bathsheba — 
Meder Suleiman . 

Yet of one apparently so well known, little is known. When 
we sift the mass of legendary lore, but few grains of authentic 
history remain ; and out of these we vainly endeavor to recon- 
struct, what is to us most important, the moral character of the 
man. 

Is the cry to the law and to the testimonies ? On the very 
threshold of such investigation, we are met by the difficulty that 
every statement for or against this man is met by another, which 
is its antipode. 

The Scripture compresses the account of Israel’s most splendid 
sovereign into eleven chapters of the book of Kings, and nine of 
Chronicles ; while these are devoted chiefly to his genealogy, and 
to descriptions of the magnificent buildings, the pride of the 
Jewish race, which were the product of his wealth and his luxuri- 
ous tastes. 

This Biblical history of Solomon is made up of excerpts from 

four works, namely : “ The Book of the Acts of Solomon,” “ The 

Book of Nathan the Prophet,” “ The Book of Aliijah the Shilon- 

ite,” “ The Visions of Iddo the Seer.” None of these belong to 

the canon of Scripture; they perished with the crumbling of the 

parchment, or papyrus rolls, whereon they were written. But 

from them the inspired historian compiled a life which the Lord 

thought worth preserving for the warning and instruction of 

coming ages. 

© © 

Besides these parts of biographical books, cast into one con- 
nected narrative, we have three books written by the king him- 
self, during the three great periods of his life, which unfold to us 
some of his inner history. They are the Song, the Divine Opera, 
the glowing Celestial Epithalamium of his poetic, peaceful, un- 
fallen youth, when he was in character like that rare boy, the son 
of Jesse, who stood by Goliath slain. 


SOLOMON. 


311 


Next come the Proverbs, the garnered wisdom of him who was 
given “ a wise and understanding heart : so that there was none 
like thee before thee, neither after thee shall any arise like unto 
thee.” 

But these Proverbs were the work of one who, in the meridian 
of his life, had tampered with his own spiritual purity, who 
stood snared by temptations of his own providing ; who tottered 
on the verge of failure ; who had learned that “ much wisdom is 
much grief ; and he that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow.” 

Lastly comes to us from his pen JKoheleth , Ecclesiastes, the 
Preacher ; and on the date and character of this book only, can we 
base any real knowledge of the eternal record, the closing spiritual 
phase, the salvation, or the doom, of Solomon. 

We shall, therefore, take up first those singularly diverse 
statements of the moral status of Solomon, given us in Scripture. 

Next we must collate his history from the Bible narrative, and 
from collateral data ; then we turn to Koheleth, and seek among 
the twisted strands for an evidence of faith and repentance. 


TnE Saintly Character of 
Solomon. 

1 Kings, Chap. iii. 

Probably the work of Nathan the 
Prophet. 

“And Solomon loved the Lord, 
walking in the statutes of David his 
father.” 

“And the speech pleased the Lord, 
that Solomon had asked this thing.” 


“And he came, and stood before 
the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, 
and offered burnt-offerings and peace- 
offerings, and made a feast to all his 
servants.” 


The Sinful Character of 
Solomon. 

1 Kings, Chap. xi. 

Probably from the Book of 
Ahijali. 

“And Solomon did evil in the sight 
of the Lord, and went not fully after 
the Lord, as did David his father.” 

“And the Lord was angry with 
Solomon, because his heart was 
turned from the Lord God of Israel, 
who had appeared to him twice.” 

“For Solomon went after Ashto- 
reth, .the goddess of the Zidonians ; 
and after Milcom, the abomination 
of the Ammonites.” 


f 


i 


012 


SOLOMON. 


“In Gibeon the Lord appeared to 
Solomon in a dream by night ; and 
God said, Ask what I shall give 
thee. And the Lord appeared a 
second time to Solomon, as he had 
appeared in Gibeon.” 


“The Lord hath performed his 
word, that he spake, and I am risen 
up in the room of my father David, 
and sit on the throne of Israel, as 
the Lord promised, and have built a 
house for the name of the Lord God 
of Israel.” 


“And if thou 'wilt walk in my 
ways, to keep my statutes and my 
commandments, as thy father David 
did w T alk, then will I lengthen thy 
days.” 

“On the eighth day he sent the 
people away : and they blessed the 
ki*ng, and went unto their tents joy- 
ful and glad at heart, for all the 
goodness which the Lord ha 1 done 
for David his servant, and for Israel 
his people.” 


“ But Solomon loved many strange 
women, together with the daughter 
of Pharaoh ; women of the Moabites, 
Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, 
and Hittites ; of the nations concern- 
ing whom the Lord had said to 
Israel: Ye shall not go in unto 
them.” 

“Then did Solomon build a high 
place for Chemosh, the abomination 
of Moab, in the hill which is before 
Jerusalem ; and for Molech, the 
abomination of the children of Am- 
mon. And likewise did he for all 
his wives which burnt incense and 
sacrificed unto their gods.” 

“ Forasmuch as this is done of thee, 
and thou hast not kept my covenant 
and my statutes which I have com- 
manded thee, I will surely rend the 
kingdom from thee.” 

“The people said to Rehoboam . 
Thy father made our yoke griev- 
ous ; now, therefore, make thou the 
grievous service of thy father, and 
his heavy yoke wdiich he hath 'put 
upon us lighter, and we will serve 
thee.” 


Nathan the Prophet was the friend of David’s later years, the 
tutor and adviser of Solomon. His record is that of the gracious, 
learned and liberal-minded young sovereign, worthy his paternity, 
and the favoritism of heaven. He exhibits to us the godly 
young man, endowed with every rich blessing of earth, and with 
the blessing and revelation of God. 

Ahijah, the Shilonite, lived in Solomon’s last days, survived 
him, beheld the reckless career of Jeroboam, and threatened him 
with the punishment of his sins. 

Ahijah, therefore, was the grieved witness, and the historian 


SOLOMON. 


313 


of Solomon’s shameful fall into idolatry. He saw the Saint 
degenerate to the idolater ; the wise man to the slave of lust ; the 
benignant ruler to the despot; and he ehronicled the ruin of the 
moral nature of Solomon, and the despair of Israel. 

And since these two portraits drawn of the same individual, 
by two great masters, are so amazingly unlike ; since they are as 
that artist’s work who drew a heavenly image of baby purity, 
and waiting forty years to draw despair, found for his model a 
wretch doomed to the gallows, who was only his child subject 
grown into manhood and vice, we must finally turn to Ecclesi- 
astes, to fill up the great reach between the time of these portraits, 
when the change in Solomon was wrought, and to lift for us the 
veil hanging over his future. 

When the history of the world had climbed high enough for a 
man set in it to be a beacon light to his fellows, God chose one 
person to show the uttermost value of human love and human 
possessions. That man was Solomon. If he got nothing worth 
having out of this world, we may be sure no one else ever shall. 

If he found the last residuum of pleasure and ambition to be 
“ -vexation of spirit,” it will remain that to all mankind forever. 
If Solomon’s resume of his achievements and honors was “ all is 
vanity,” then vanitas vanitatis must be ceaselessly the wail of the 
worldling, as he gropes between the cradle and the tomb, which 
for him lie all too far apart. 

At the birth of Solomon, David was fifty years of age. He 
had been a man of war from his youth ; had made some vast con- 
quests, suffered some sore defeats; had loved, and hoped, and 
aspired gloriously; had sinned very grievously; had repented 
very bitterly. He had come to an age when the chief longing of 
the storm-tossed soul is for rest. 

When the loving father looked on the peaceful face of his 
youngest born, the calm beauty of the babe suggested his name. 


314 


SOLOMON. 


Here was the child foretold, the pacific monarch of an unvexed 
nation ; his wish was father of his belief, he called Bathsheba’s 
infant, Shelomoh — the peaceful one. 

Nathan the Prophet came presently to congratulate his friend 
and king ; and when he blessed the child, called him Jedidiah, 
“ the Lord’s beloved.” 

Nathan had already a namesake among the sons of his royal 
friend, and now David gave a renewed proof of his love, in 
making the prophet the tutor and guardian of Solomon’s early 
years. 

The three grand influences on the forming character of Solomon 
were these : his father, his mother, and his teacher, Nathan. 

David was growing old ; his heart was still greatly engrossed by 
love for Absalom. Before long, severe family troubles weighed 
him down. In anxieties for those elder children, who had grown 
up around him so beautiful, so fascinating, so reckless, so fierce in 
passion, his thoughts were frequently distracted from the Theo- 
cratic heir, the slender boy, training in scholarly seclusion. 

Bathsheba we see as a radiant, proud, ambitious, energetic wo- 
man. From an humble dwelling she had stepped into a palace; 
of plebeian birth, she had become a king’s favorite wife, and had 
taken precedence of princesses. The steps by which she reached 
this high estate are such that the less we say about them the better 
for Bathsheba. She had already learned that her son was the 
future king, and, very much younger than her royal husband, she 
looked forward to the grand position of queen-mother. 

Nathan the Prophet of the Lord was, as we see from the history, 
devotedly attached to his pupil ; ardent by nature, gifted with un- 
usual tact, with a keen eye to all that went on about him, most 
probably a man of poetic talent and studious habits ; the early years 
of Solomon bore the impress of his gentle, earnest nature. 

The desire of David was to separate his heir from all the 


SOLOMON. 


SI 5 

distracting influences which had marred his own life ; no hard- 
ships, temptations, dangers or hates should disturb the serenity 
of the coming king. 

His ideal of the future kingdom and its monarch we find in 
the seventy-second Psalm, where, under the type of the approach- 
ing glory of Solomon, he depicts the more distant reign of the 
Lord Christ. 

The youth of David had been pure, humble and content 
“ among the sheepfolds; ” his successor’s early days were as dif- 
ferent from this as possible.; petted in the harem, nurtured by an 
ambitious mother, taught all the learning of prophet, priest and 
Levite, and receiving additional lustre from the incoming cul- 
ture of Phoenicia. 

Despite his father’s precautions, Solomon’s youth passed through 
two great storms of revolt, each of which threatened to deprive 
him of the throne. Absalom and Adonijah each resented his 
supremacy, but after Adonijah’s speedily-crushed rebellion, Solomon 
found himself firmly seated on the throne. 

Here the current of the history divides itself, and we must fol- 
low first the scanty history of his external life, and then the more 
important revelation of his moral character. When Solomon became 
king, the Jewish nation was for the first and last time among the 
chief monarchies of the earth. The young sovereign found at his 
disposal the almost boundless treasures accumulated by the pru- 
dent and successful David. His people were thoroughly loyal, 
and were all outwardly faithful to the religion of Jehovah. The 
arts and sciences had under David’s liberal sway received a new 
impetus, and were being carried forward to the highest perfection 
of which that age and race were capable. At once two powerful 
allies offered themselves to Solomon ; Hiram king of Tyre, chief 
of the Phoenician races, and Pharaoh king of Egypt, who cemented 
the friendship by giving him his daughter to wife. This was the 


316 




SOLOMON. 


first friendly overture between the Egyptians and the Israelites 
since the Exodus, a period of nearly five hundred years. 

Solomon had already during his father’s lifetime married Naa- 
mah, an Ammonitess; by whom the year before his accession he 
had a son, Behoboam, who inherited the kingdom. The marriage 
with the Egyptian princess was one of state policy, and of very 
poor policy, for it had in it no safe religious element. 

The general prosperity, the abundance, the learning, the morality 
of the Jewish nation at the beginning of this reign ; the unmatched 
wisdom and prudence of Solomon, the orderly administration of 
his affairs, and the magnificent indulgence of his opulent taste, ex- 
cited the admiration of all the kingdoms about him, and filled his 
court with ambassadors and princes who came to be witnesses of 
his wisdom and glory. 

** All this infinite prosperity had been secured to him by the 
single influence of David, because lie had scrupulously conformed 
himself to the Theocracy of the Hebrew State” says Jahn. 

The result of his foreign alliances, especially with Tyre, was a 
great change in the Jewish policy. Hitherto they had dwelt shut 
up in their own land, now they suddenly spread themselves abroad, 
and developed that amazing genius for trade which has made the 
Hebrew from that day to this the pilgrim of commerce, whose foot 
traverses every land, seeking wealth, the shining Mecca of his soul. 
In ships built along the coasts of Joppa, Ezion-geber and Elath, 
the Israelites joined with the Phoenicians in voyages of traffic, the 
Mediterranean was covered with their sails, and every port of the 
Levant was occupied with their commerce. More than this, the 
ships went down the iElanitic Gulf into the Indian Ocean, and 
found new lands to lay their tribute at the feet of Solomon. 

But the commercial spirit once aroused did not content itself 
with traffic by the sea, it was carried on by caravans wherever 
there were articles coveted in exchange. 


SOLOMON. 


317 


•Wherever these traders went they spread the story of the wisdom 
and splendor of their king, until the name of Solomon became a 
household word, through all the “ cradle lands ” of the East. 

David had left to Solomon the charge of building a most glorious 
temple to the Lord. He could have assigned him no duty more 
congenial. The king had largely developed architectural tastes. 
He wedded the building instinct of the Hamitic race to the reli- 
gious proclivities of the Shemitcs ; just as he united the arrogant 
despotism of the heathen to the Theocratic duty of the Hebrew. 

Ages have celebrated the Temple, of which the rich beauty, like 
its sacred design, was superior to any other building that has ever 
graced the earth. Its chief artizans, like those of the tabernacle, 
were peculiarly inspired, and it was modelled after that holy tent, 
whose pattern was showed to Moses on the mount of God. After 
three years of preparation, the foundation was laid in the fourth 
year of Solomon’s reign ; after a space of seven years and six 
months, the completed building stood on Mount Moriah. During 
all these years no clamor of labor had disturbed the stillness of 
the holy city — 

“ No hammer smote, no ponderous axes rung, 

Like some tall palm, the mystic fabric sprung.” 


On the day when with prayer and sacrifice this temple was 
consecrated to God, when the priests broke forth into pseans to 
the Lord of Hosts, the divine glory filled the Holy House and 
marked the acceptance of the place of Jehovah’s rest. When the 
sacrifices were laid on the altar, fire which no mortal hand had 
kindled flashed up to consume them. This was the culminating 
day of Jewish history ; already in this grand hour the causes of 
destruction were hidden in the heart of the empire, and from 
thence it moved downward, first by imperceptible degrees, then 
faster and faster until Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus, and the 
hapless Jews were dispersed in every nation under heaven. 


318 


SOLOMON. 


Besides the Temple, Solomon built a palace for his Egyptian 
wife, who had brought him cities as her dower. This house he 
placed outside the holy city of David, on account of the idolatry 
of its mistress. He also built for himself a house so elaborate 
and magnificent, that its erection occupied thirteen years. He 
had also a house of the forests of Lebanon, which seems to have 
been modelled after Assyrian palaces; besides these were the 
porch of pillars, and the porch of judgment, each of which were 
costly and extensive structures. He built the w^all of Jerusalem ; 
many cities and treasure magazines ;‘ also “ fenced cities with bars 
and gates,” and Bethhoron and Tadmor in the vulderness. 

The wealth and glory of Solomon are celebrated by the his- 
torians, Eupolemus and Theophilus. He reigned, they tell us, 
over subject nations from Euphrates to Egypt. 

His works, as they are exhibited to us in Scripture, are very 
singularly impressed with the spirit of his day. The idea we 
form of his palaces, as they are described by the sacred historian, 
is of exactly such buildings as have been excavated at Susa and 
Persepolis. His ivory throne is such as those ivory carvings, 
fragments of some similar royal seat, which have been brought 
from Mesopotamia; the lion’s feet are like those on which stood 
the thrones of the Assyrian monarchs. Even those pillars, Jachin 
and Boaz, which have excited so much attention, have their 
duplicates in profane history, in the golden' pillar which Hiram 
set up, containing a full length golden image of his daughter; 
and in the two costly pillars which stood at the doorway of the 
Temple of the Phoenician Venus. 

But few data remain to us from which to construct a continuous 
history. We learn of the alliances made; of some few conquests ; 
of much development of the national resources; of the number 
and splendor of public buildings erected, and of the forty years’ 
length of the reign. Presents, tribute, the emoluments of com- 


SOLOMON. 


319 


merce poured into the kingdom ; silver was like stones for abun- 
dance, and was nothing accounted of; the costly cedar became 
common as sycamore wood to the luxurious nation. But luxury 
was never the alma mater of piety. 

“ So Solomon exceeded all the kings of the earth for riches and 
wisdom.” “All the drinking vessels of Solomon were of pure 
gold. . . . Every three years came the ships of Tarshish, bringing 
gold and silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks ; . . . every man brought 
his present — vessels of silver and vessels of gold, and raiment, 
harness, and spices, horses and mules, a rate year by year.” 

Of his throne : < “ There was not the like made in any king- 
dom.” He had “ four thousand stalls for horses ; a thousand and 
four hundred chariots ; and twelve thousand horsemen.” 

In this splendid state and success, Solomon reigned over Israel 
for forty years. 

Closing our glance at the externals of this reign, we consider 
that no nation could support the extravagant taxation, and inor- 
dinate expenses of a government like Solomon’s. 

Solomon had departed from the Theocratic purity of the 
Hebrew national constitution ; he had defied all the fundamental 
principles of the commonwealth ; he had allied himself with the 
enemies of God, his King; he had created an immense standing 
army ; he had countenanced and practised idolatry. 

His kingdom had thrived on his own personal fame ; it had 
grown great in the greatness of the monarch, and had no inherent 
vigor to keep pace with and support its rapid rise — it had 
emphatically outgrown its strength. 

We turn now to trace the moral career of Solomon, and we 
begin with him at his coronation. 

In his filial character he was especially beautiful. He care- 
fully obeyed the last commands of his father, and guided himself 
by his advice. 


320 


SOLOMON. 


One may say these commands were such that private vengeance, 
or a thirst for power, would prompt him to fulfil them. But 
beyond being the instrument of punishment to those who had 
disturbed his father’s reign, and might overthrow his own, we 
find Solomon rewarding those who had served his father ; choosing 
the dead king’s councillors as his own ; remembering Nathan the 
Prophet with tenderness, taking Nathan’s son for his principal 
officer and best friend; and at the dedication of the Temple, he 
ascribes to David all the praise : “ It was in the heart of my 
father David, to build a house for the name of the Lord God of 
Israel.” 

Among the Eastern nations there is no woman who outranks 
the queen mother. This naturally arises from the practice of 
polygamy. Among the many wives, some more influential, some 
more nobly born, some dearer than the others, one cannot publicly 
and invariably take precedence; but the queen mother stands 
above them all, and often assists at the councils of state. Such 
place the ambitious Bathsheba held, and Solomon gave her loving 
reverence. When she entered his presence, he “ rose up to meet 
her, and bowed himself unto her, and sat down on his throne, 
and caused a seat to be set for the king’s mother ; and she sat at 
his right hand.” 

When she speaks he replies : “Ask on, my mother, for I will 
not say thee nay.” 

Some have commented on this narrative that the king falls into 
a violent and unreasonable passion, and uses scoffing and abusive 
language to his mother at her request. 

We cannot understand the passage in this light; the wary king 
sees a plot which the discreet Bathsheba had been unable to 
detect. In calm but clear language, he shows her all the meaning 
hidden in that apparently simple petition, and denies what it is 
impossible to grant. 


SOLOMON. 


321 


All through the book of Proverbs runs this golden vein of 
filial love and reverence ; the cherishing of parental counsels, and 
setting them in a prominent place. 

The second characteristic which we are brought to notice in 
Solomon is his high appreciation of wisdom. The favorite and 
diligent pupil of the best man of his day, by the time he has 
entered into his kingdom, has learned enough to know that he 
has but touched the very beginnings of wisdom ; he is able to see 
and to desire the treasures that lie beyond. 

He values wisdom above riches, warlike conquests, or long lifi , ; 
all those things which other men crave passionately fade for him 
before the surpassing glory of wisdom. It is evident also that it 
is not merely earthly wisdom which he covets ; it must be that 
wisdom which has its foundation in the fear of the Lord, because 
he asks for it with a right motive, and to use for doing good, and 
his request pleases the Lord. If it pleases Jehovah, it must be 
very right indeed. 

The Lord, therefore, gave him a wise and understanding heart, 
and added riches and honor as a token of approbation. He also 
promised him long life conditionally . “If thou wilt walk in my 
ways, to keep my statutes and commandments as thy father 
David did walk, then will I lengthen thy days.” 

If Solomon had not ceased to serve the Lord, he might have 
reached his century, and died “ full of years and honors, in a good 
old age.” As it was, this matchless king among men, died about 
his sixtieth year. 

Solomon’s reverential, religious spirit is strongly marked. He 
celebrated religious festivals with a lavish abundance of offerings, 
such as nowhere else appears in either sacred or profane history. 
New mercies were the occasion of renewed worship ; the joy of 
his heart found expression in the praise of God. He was favored 
twice with direct communication with the Lord of Hosts. God 
21 


322 


SOLOMON. 


spoke to David by the mouths of Samuel, Gad and Nathan, but 
to Solomon he appeared twice in visions of the night. 

Thus was Solomon at the beginning of his reign ; heir of a 
wealthy and prosperous kingdom; nobly dowered in intellect; 
rich in the Divine gift of song ; the idol of his subjects ; the 
cynosure of surrounding nations ; remarkable for personal beauty 
— his face bright and ruddy like David’s in his youth ; his raven 
locks lit with a golden glow in sunshine ; his eyes “ like a 
dove’s” in his gentler moods; his sympathies large; his humor 
ready and genial ; his heart elate and full of jocund hope — this 
was the man whom God had anointed with the oil of gladness 
above his fellows. 

But now we turn to the darker underlying shades of character, 
which gradually destroyed the noble beauty of the moral man ; 
and we have yet to see whether he drifted into eternity a hopeless 
wreck, or whether Koheleth tells us of a penitent soul, come back 
to shelter in the bosom of its God. 

The first evil trait sullying this goodly character of Shelomoh is 
his inordinate love of magnificence. Scripture tells us of the 
extravagant expenditure of his household. He resolved to make 
his reign a gala day, a long, joyous festival. Lo the picture, 
painted by inspiration: “ Judah and Israel were many, as the 
sand which is by the sea for multitude, eating, and drinking, and 
making merry.” At the head of this revelling nation was the 
royal court— “ officers provided victuals for king Solomon, and 
for all that came to his table, every man in his month : they 
lacked nothing.” 

“He had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots.” 
Each province in turn was bound to provide for the king’s exten- 
sive and luxurious household. The total amount of gold paid 
yearly into the treasury was six hundred and sixty-six talents, 
while the value of the payments in kind must have been even 
greater. 


SOLOMON. 


323 


Indeed, the amounts expended in building the palaces, courts, 
porches, temple and cities, defy calculation. Dr. Prideaux esti- 
mates the treasures left by David at eight hundred million pounds 
— about the amount of the national debt of England. David 
must have been a financier, to put all modern speculators, brokers, 
and . Chancellors of the Exchequer to the blush. 

But when we consider that Solomon covered walls, steps and 
pillars with gold ; that he made every vessel in his palace of gold ; 
that his armory was furnished with the same metal, two hundred 
targets, and three hundred shields of beaten gold hanging on its 
walls, we see first that David’s mass of treasure must have been 
as a drop in a mighty sea, that we have no idea of the relative 
value of gold in those days, and that whatever it was, when we 
consider the taxes paid in live stock, fruit, olive oil, cereals, and 
game, no nation, no financial system could have stood for a long 
period the strain of such enormous outlays. 

This taste for magnificence led Solomon into imitation of the 
heathen kings of Phoenicia, Assyria and Egypt. It was a fatal 
mistake to abandon the simplicity of the kingdom as laid down 
by Samuel. * Out of these magnificent tastes grew — 

Personal ambition. To increase his grandeur, he created, as 
Saul had begun to do, and as David had numbered the people to 
do, a standing army. “He had twelve thousand horsemen.” 
Josephus tells us that he had a bodyguard of archers, who were 
clad in costly Tyrian purple, and whose hair was sprinkled with 
powdered gold. He had fourteen hundred war chariots, each of 
which was purchased in Egypt for six hundred shekels of silver ; 
while a pair of horses for it cost three hundred shekels. This 
ambition was the cause of his alliances with heathen, particularly 
with the Egyptians; and standing armies and heathen allies 
were alike foreign to the principles of the Theocratic kingdom. 
More than this, ambition entered into Solomon’s seeking for 


324 


SOLOMON. 


knowledge. At first it had been a pure and lawful desire, a wish 
to make the most of the mental gifts bestowed upon him ; to get 
wisdom, and use it to benefit his race. But when fame of his 
learning spread abroad, and the wise men of all nations came to 
applaud, Solomon’s right desire degenerated to curiosity, to an 
avarice for unlawful secrets ; he coveted the tabooed arcana of hea- 
then lore. 

The Biblical account of his learning — written, probably, in his 
early, gracious days — is, “ And God gave Solomon wisdom and 
understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart, even as 
the sand that is on the sea-shore. And Solomon excelled the 
wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom 
of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men ; than Ethan the Eiz- 
rahite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol ; 
and his fame was in all nations round about. And he spake 
three thousand proverbs, and his songs were a thousand and five. 
And he spake of trees, from the cedar of Lebanon even to the 
hyssop that springeth out of the wall : he spake also of beasts and 
fowl, of creeping things, and of fishes.” 

Of all this great mass of Solomon’s proverbs, poesy, and natu- 
ral history, very little has been preserved. Therefore very little 
was worth preserving. What was thrown away was doubtless 
rejected very much to the advantage of Solomon’s reputation. 
When the king began to meddle with the superstitions of heathen- 
ism, his mind began to degenerate. 

In these days of materialism we are prone to reject all that 
savors of the supernatural. We are realistic to such an extent 
that we argue away miracles, wonders, revelations, wherever we 
possibly can. 

We expect, some day, to see Tennant’s trance referred to an 
accidental overdose of opium ! 

It has became necessary to assert that the tremendous fabric of 


SOLOMON. 


325 


the Chaldaic and Egyptian and Hindoo ' astrology, divination, 
magic and wonder-working, was sleight of hand, or an airy no- 
thing. It makes very little difference, inasmuch as our salvation 
in no wise depends on the question ; but the “ fantastic fables ” 
woven about the name of Solomon are worthy of a second 
thought. They are so worthy, because they are so wide spread. 
They represent the general belief of the nations nearest him in 
both time and space. A popular belief, especially a belief that is 
common to varied and widely scattered nationalities, deserves con- 
sideration, and has often grains of truth in it. We point with 
much complacency to the wide-spread traditions of the flood. 

The East assigns to Solomon strange knowledge of unholy 
mysteries. He knew spells to subdue and cast out evil spirits ; 
he had charms and incantations to cure disease and work miracles ; 
he understood the language of beasts, birds, and fishes ; the secret 
virtues of gems and herbs ; he wore a magic ring, which opened 
to him the past, present, and future. Josephus religiously credits 
the most of these tales ; he relates that he himself saw one Eze- 
kiel, a Jew, cast out and command demons, by means of the spells 
and name of Solomon, in the presence of the whole Roman army. 

But the unfortunate case of Josephus, the toady of the Caesars, 
is, that we believe him, quote him, rely implicitly on him, when, 
in out judgment, he is telling the truth ; and scorn, reject, and re- 
proach him, as wildly unreliable, when, in our opinion , he is tell- 
ing a lie. We use or cast aside the unlucky historian, just in 
proportion as he suits or fails to suit our theories. 

After all, as we survey the character of Solomon, we feel that 
doubtless he forsook the wisdom which is from above, the legiti- 
mate pursuit of knowledge, and turned aside to those themes 
which are, in themselves, unholy and disallowed of God. It is 
the natural and often fatal impulse of the human soul. Says 
Howson, in his Life of Paul, “ We can hardly wonder, when the 


SOLOMON. 


326 

✓ 

East was thrown open — the land of mystery, the fountain of ear- 
liest migrations, the cradle of the earliest religions — that the 
imagination, both of the populace and the aristocracy of Rome, 
became fanatically excited.” Tiberius sat upon a rock, cum gregc 
Chaldceo , says Juvenal ; and Tacitus tells us that astrologers will 
forever be jeered and retained. 

Solomon would never have found such wisdom as he craved 
in a request that was well pleasing to God : “ vexation of spirit ” 
a “ weariness to the flesh ; ” “ no profit under the sun.” In- 
deed, .in Ecclesiastes we find Solomon telling us of two kinds of 
wisdom, one is apples of Sodom, bitterness unspeakable, and a 
weaning of the soul from God, a barrier to immortal life. The 
other is everlasting “ profit ; ” is “ strength ; ” is “ better than 
weapons of war ; ” full of " gracious words.” 

Doubtless this Solomon knew much more than we give him 
credit for. He was called a wise man, say we, but he knew 
nothing of the electric telegraph ; he never saw a train of cars, 
nor a needle gun; now-a-days the little boys in our schools 
could tell him things to astonish him; he was very well for his 
day — but not for ours. 

Probably Solomon had a wisdom so far beyond his day that 
even yet we fail to appreciate it. There are wonderful scientific 
truths hinted at in Koheleth, which we do not fully grasp as he 
meant them. He had a wisdom that took hold on the precious 
things of the everlasting hills; which understood the mighty 
economy of the ages ; which summed the value of the finite, and 
drank at the fountain of the Infinite. He was like a glorious 
young cherub, strong to run his intellectual race. Among men he 
was like him whom Satan 

“Saw within ken a glorious angel stand, 

The same whom John saw also in the sun, 

His hack was turned, hut not his brightness hid ; 

Of beaming sunny rays a golden tiar 


SOLOMON. 


327 


Circled his head, nor less his locks behind 
Illustrious on his shoulders fledge with wings 
Lay waving round ; on some great charge employed 
lie seemed, or fixed in cogitation deep.” 

Thus was Solomon seeking wisdom as God wills. 

But perchance he wandered into other fields, and was led aside 
into false deductions, and began to doubt the word of the Lord, 
and to weigh his Maker in balances of his own poor devising, 
and limit him with lines of his own drawing. Perhaps he pre- 
ceded Darwin and Huxley and Penan and Strauss in their 
heaven-rejecting fields of thought, and found this vexation of 
spirit, and self- weariness and folly, and vanity and despair ; and 
out of those painful regions of unbelief he came, as similar modern 
prophets are like to come, to gross idolatry. As Dean Howson 
says : “ Unbelief, when it has become conscious of its weakness , is 
often glad to give its hand to superstition,” and it is a sentence 
worthy to be held in perpetual remembrance. 

And so out of this personal ambition of Solomon we reach 
the time when he was weak enough to become an idolater, and 
we turn our attention for a moment to the immediate provocation 
to that idolatry. Solomon, like most people who are magnificent 
in their tastes, was inordinately self-indulgent. Let a man give 
free rein to his passions,, beginning even at one which is not par- 
ticularly evil, and anon he will be swept away in a whirlwind of 
reckless indulgence. Gratifying his extravagant tastes, Solomon 
would increase his harem to add to his glory, and before long the 
purity and dignity of his character were lost in a torrent of licen- 
tiousness. “ But Solomon loved many strange women ; and it came 
to pass that when he was old his wives turned away his heart after 
other gods.” 

Now sunk in base idolatry, the king of Israel, the peaceful one , 
the beloved of the Lord, went to bow at the horrible shrine of 
the Assyrian Venus; abased himself before the outrageous altars 


328 


SOLOMON. 


of bloody Molech, and offered incense to Chemosh the abomination 
of Moab, and Milcom the idol of the Ammonites. 

Having thus forsaken his God, we cannot be surprised at seeing 
him despise human justice. He who is a traitor, is apt to be a 
tyrant. Solomon forsaking his religion developed an unscrupu- 
lousness which had perhaps ever been in some activity, but which 
piety had restrained. Very likely the king trampled on some 
private hopes, some domestic affections, when he took the sixty 
tallest and strongest men of the nation for his body guard ; he 
was like Frederick the Great in his love for grenadiers ! He re- 
duced the “ strangers in the land,” the remnants of the Canaanites, 
the relics of that fatal covenant with the Gibeonites, to a wretched 
race of unpaid helots, to serfs who wailed in “ bitter bondage.” 
Long after, there lingered about the temple a clan of laborers 
called, “ Solomon’s servants.” These foreign slaves he treated as 
creatures without souls or natural affections. He forced one hun- 
dred and fifty-three thousand of them from their homes, their little 
ancestral acres, their family burial places, and sent them to the 
quarries and the forests of Lebanon. Augustus did no worse when 
after the civil war he tore the inhabitants of Mantua and Cremona 
fr/; m their homes, and gave their possessions to his soldiers. Many 
a stranger, who had become part and parcel of the Hebrew com- 
monwealth, might have wailed like poor Melibseus : 

“ I wonder if in coming years, my little realm, my ej r es 
Shall see above thy waving corn my turf-tliatched cottage rise.” 

During the earlier parts of his reign, Solomon laid these cruel 
burdens on foreigners, and not upon Israelites. It was an iniqui- 
tous but national proceeding. Later, he oppressed all alike ; mi- 
litary service, serfdom, taxation, all made the Hebrews groan, 
until they could cry to Rehoboam : “ Thy father made our yoke 
grievous ; now therefore ease thou somewhat the grievous servitude 
of thy father, and his heavy yoke.” 


SOLOMON. 


329 


The people hated Adoniram who was over the tribute ; their 
allegiance to Solomon grew cold ; dark looks and murmurs of re- 
volt greeted the once popular king. Thus he had fallen ; he was 
growing old ; God was not with him ; the Levites, prophets and 
priests who had stood like bands of angels about his throne, now 
shrunk away, bewailing, and denounced the vengeance of Heaven, 
as they saw temples of Baal, and Astarte and Molech, proudly 
fronting and facing the Temple of the Lord God. Enemies were 
stirred up against him. Hadad the Edomite arrayed himself as 
an adversary. The alliance with Egypt was broken. Shishak, 
or Seshonk, the king of Egypt, aided the foes of Israel. Rezon 
the king of Damascus was another opponent ; and Ahijah, sent by 
the Lord, symbolically gave ten parts of the kingdom of Israel 
to Jeroboam «on of Nebat, and Jeroboam raised a revolt which 
shook the already tottering throne. The reign of Solomon, as nar- 
rated in First Kings, begins with the attempted usurpation of 
Adonijah, and ends with the rebellion of Jeroboam. 

In these dark days of his adversity Solomon wrote Koheleth, 
or Ecclesiastes. Very many of the German critics stoutly maintain 
that Ecclesiastes is not the production of Solomon. The argu- 
ments are, many of them, based on rationalistic theories and inte- 
rests; and a stronger one on verbal evidence — the numerous 
Chaldaeisms in the work. “ The deep and difficult things of Scrip- 
ture/’ says Taylor Lewis, “ are oftentimes better comprehended 
by the spiritual than the critical mind.” But we have both criti- 
cal acumen and spiritual discernment in favor of the long-main- 
tained belief that Solomon alone wrote “ The Preacher.” There 
is one argument which can only be classed as most atrocious and 
irreligious, namely, that the Jews knew nothing of the future life 
until they derived the knowledge of it from the Persians during 
the captivity, which will be more properly referred to in writing 
of the Prophet Daniel. 


330 


SOLOMON. 


We cite a few sentences from Professor Tayler Lewis, on 
the Solomonic authorship of Ecclesiastes : “ Notwithstanding the 
plausible arguments of Zockler, and the authorities which he 
quotes, the antiquity and the Solomonic authorship of Koheleth, 
are not lightly to be given up. The rationalistic interest contra- 
dicts itself. Once set it loose from Solomon’s time, and there is no 
other place where it can be. securely anchored. The internal evi- 
dence of the Solomonic authorship, when viewed by itself, without 
reference to later words or Chald£eisms, is very strong. It is just 
such a series of meditations as the history of that monarch would 
lead us to ascribe to him in his old age, after his experience of the 
vanity of this life in its best earthly estate, and that repentance for 
his misuse of God’s gifts in serving his own pleasures, which 
would seem natural to his condition.” Here the learned commenta- 
tor strikes the key note of Ecclesiastes — experience and repent- 
ance. 

When Solomon had sifted all earthly pleasures, had gratified love, 
pride, ambition, curiosity, lust, every emotion of the soul ; when 
he had sinned profoundly, when he had tried all wisdom, he sat 
down to write the history of his mental and moral experience. 

His first wish had been for wisdom, therefore he wrote of wis- 
dom first, and showed, in the first and second chapters (as they are 
divided in our English Bible) that “ the theoretical wisdom of 
men directed to a knowledge of the things of this world, is 
vanity.” He might have added that the theoretical wisdom of 
men directed to Biblical criticism is also very often vanity ; and 
it is a pity that many of the German rationalistic commentators 
could not lay the idea to heart. “ Human effort confined to the 
conditions of life, and the knowledge of this earthly world,” can 
gain no lasting happiness. This was. Solomon’s lesson from expe- 
rience. In the latter verses of our second chapter, Solomon shows 
that this earthly wisdom is not only unproductive of good, but if 


SOLOMON. 


331 


it is not affiliated to a higher wisdom, it is of itself a burden ; and 
he gives his own case as an example. Next, the monarch shows 
why temporal acts and happiness are restricted, and that the true 
essence of human happiness is # gratitude to God. He finds, also, 
that all human deeds are temporal and evanescent, in proportion 
as they lack the element of godliness. The misfortunes of men 
next engage him, and here, as elsewhere, he drew from his own 
heart and life history. He found that “ the race of men is like 
the race of leaves,” their loves, hopes, hates, joys, woes, are as le- 
gends written by the Sibyl on the leaves in her cave, and lo, the 
light wind carries them away. All human life is vanity. But 
Solomon has learned, by dire experiences, the means of advancing 
and retaining human* happiness. He sees these means to be, de- 
votion to God’s worship, “ abstaining from violence and injustice 
and avarice, and maintaining a temperance in all enjoyments.” 
Alas ! for Solomon, he had felt the ills of idolatry, despotism and 
lust ; he had proven in himself how they embitter all fountains 
of peace. 

Then he arrives at the theme of True Wisdom, and shows that it 
does not clasp itself on earthly happiness, but reaches upward into 
the region of eternal love. He who loves earth, loves vanity, and 
pines over a constant loss, but True Wisdom despises lust, and 
cleaves to patience and the fear of God. 

Then he warns against irreligion and the lusts whereby he 
himself has fallen so low. In his day of folly he had commended 
mirth, as the best good under the sun ; grown wiser now, he calls 
it vanity — a vapor. In this book, also, we find the expression of 
Solomon’s penitence for his lapses from the allegiance due Jeho- 
vah, the true Sovereign of Israel. The king should be obeyed, as 
in regard to the oath of God, as the legate of heaven ; therefore 
the king must work the will of heaven, he must be subject to 
the kings’ King. Therefore, reasons Solomon, than whom none 


332 


SOLOMON. 


can reason better, though earthly wisdom perishes, and is consola- 
tory neither in living nor dying ; let us strive after supernal wis- 
dom, by which we live well and die happy. 

The destiny of man is full of dark places ; God’s will and his 
dealings in Providence are unfathomable ; but we are pointed to 
the wisdom which is from above, as a clue to lead us through these 
labyrinthine ways, and when we have reached a higher life, the 
dark places will be made clear. 

For in Koheleth we have the certainty of the immortal life, 
continuance of being after death; the Preacher sees, after the tur- 
moil of living, “ a tranquil, holy, conscious rest, under the shadow 
of the Almighty.” Perhaps, also, he catches a divine glimpse of 
the glorious and beloved Hermes of the Church, of Him who be- 
longs both to the living and the dead, to both worlds, the buried 
and risen one, Redeemer of our flesh and spirit. Koheleth shows 
the vast difference between the wise man and the fool ; between 
the saint and the sinner. He can do that very well,, for he has 
played the fool himself, and has had but a poor time of it. Then 
he shows the beauty of a holy life ; _the happiness of the heart at 
peace with God and men ; the advantages of religion and human- 
ity. He has come to the conclusion that “ the only true way to 
happiness in this world and the world beyond, consists in benevo- 
lence; in fidelity to one’s calling, a calm and contented enjoyment 
of life and unfeigned fear of God from early youth to advanced 
age.” 

Here, indeed, is the Noble Lesson , the true Golden Legend, the 
absolute Wisdom of Solomon. 

Himself, an old man, prematurely old, because he has not pre- 
served that temperance and chastity which he has learned, too late, 
to value, Solomon draws a most wonderful picture of old age. He 
has followed the later maxim, “ Look into thine heart, and then 
write.” He has very likely found those eternal veracities, which 


SOLOMON. 


333 


Carlyle says are needful to being a poet, for here Solomon breaks 
forth into a rare, beautiful, pathetic song, poesy of the highest 
order. Old age, old age indeed ; drawn with wonderful fidelity, 
but it is the old age of one whose youth was spent in self-indul- 
gence ; who left the service of his Lord to serve himself. He 
represents an old man dwelling in the midst of luxury, surrounded 
with wealth, servants, entertainments; enjoyment dead; his very 
heart burnt out to ashes : it is a very pitiful picture, especially 
when we set it beside that of Moses, who, at one hundred and 
twenty years, found not his eye dim nor his natural force abated. 
Set Solomon’s old man beside the old man Moses, and they Mill 
preach such a lesson of the profits of godliness, as will startle 
every soul. 

At last, his arguments, his heart-history, his self-upbraiding 
ended ; Solomon reaches the conclusion of the whole matter : 

“ Fear God, and keep his commandments : for this is the wh.de 
duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, 
with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be 
evil.” 

Here Solomon sets forth his expectation of a coming judgmevit, 
a grand and awful world assize, as he has previously set forth fthe 
immortal life and the eternal home. 

This analysis of earth and its honors, this loyal speaking forth 
for God, represent to us Solomon as at last repentant. He had 
sinned, he had been chastised, he had humbled himself ; he had 
cast himself anew on the long-sutfering and forgiving mercy of 
our Lord. Perhaps, for the first and only time, he was right 
toward God. He may, in his beautiful early youth, have been 
the moralist, the product of parental restraint and religious educa- 
tion, without the stamina of true piety ; then he may have fallen, 
a sinning soul, wholly estranged from God ; and late have learned 
regeneration, repentance, conversion. Or he may have been God’s 


334 


SOLOMON. 


true servant in early life, then have yielded to the indwelling sin, 
and then turned to seek, with tears, self-upbraiding and self-dis- 
trust, the Father’s face. “ Better,” said Solomon, “is a poor 
and wise child than an old and foolish king.” The temper of 
childhood is needful to salvation. At last, when all the world was 
exhausted, Solomon was ready to enter heaven as a little child ; 
and this was indeed the only frame of mind in which he, or any 
one, could get there. When he came to cast himself on God in a 
child spirit, he was safe. Blessed thought ! “ The difficulty is 

never on the side of God. The Divine pity never lags behind 
any genuine human sorrow.” 


XVI. 

JEROBOAM. 

IDOLATRY THE RELIGION OF THE NATURAL MAN. 


THEISM is not an indigenous product of the human 
soul. Indeed one is inclined to wonder if Atheism can 
ever be more than a braggart theory; whether it is in 
any case an absolute belief ; for danger and death seem 
ever able to shock the vaunting Atheist out of his creed of nega- 
tions, and set him calling upon a higher power, until the cause of 
terror is removed, or breath fails him. 

Religion is natural to man ; idolatry is the religion of the natural 
man. 

Man has two natures, the physical and the spiritual. The new- 
born babe cries for food, opens its mouth, and swallows eagerly 
its nourishment. The religious instinct is the clamoring of the 
spiritual nature for the food needful for its life and perfection. 

Boucher de Perthes, in his volume on “ Innate Ideas,” says : 
“ It is impossible for man to extinguish in himself the conviction 
that there is a God. It has been said that children derive their 
idea of God from the instruction of others ; that it is never origi- 
nal. 1 am convinced of the contrary. I myself was a child when 
religion (in France) was proscribed; when one did not venture 
even to allude to it ; yet the intuition of God was within me.” 

But though this idea, this feeling after a higher power, may be 

inborn, may be the demand which God implanted for the greatest 

335 



336 


JEROBOAM. 


good, and which he intended to supply, we must never forget 
man’s very existence began with an inspiration, a revelation which 
became the grand tradition of the race. God walked in the garden, 
and those “ walking hours ” became the golden age, set forever 
in the memory of even the most degenerate scions of the human 
family. Cain received from the lips of his parents, and from his 
own experience of the glory between the cherubim, a positive know- 
ledge of a higher overruling power. 

There has been much discussion of the “ gradual development 
of the religious idea ; ” as if man left to himself will spontaneously 
grow into a knowledge of his Creator, and the life of faith. The 
history of the race proves that man, beginning with a distinct 
revelation, as soon as he resisted the teaching Spirit of God, and 
set up his own will and ideas, as in the case of Cain, began to go 
astray from the knowledge of the Eternal ; and while he could 
not eradicate the belief in a God, speedily perverted his belief in 
the One God, who had created man and taught him in Eden. 

“ It has been the glory of the Semitic race,” says M. Henan, 
“ that from its earliest days it grasped that notion of Deity which 
all other peoples have had to adopt from its example, and on faith 
of its declarations.” “ Of the Semitic race, however,” adds Baring- 
Gould, “ but one small branch, Jewdom, preserved and communi- 
cated the idea; every other branch of the Semitic race, like the 
other races, sank into polytheism.” 

Evidently the Shemite, the Jew, did not preserve and communi- 
cate this idea through his own peculiar, natural, moral force and 
intellectual strength ; for in morals and intellect the uninspired, 
unregenerate Hebrew has never proved the superior of other 
nations. It was simply because God chose the Sethite, then the 
Shemitic race, then its branch the Hebrew, to preserve his name, 
his idea, his religion, pure upon the earth. He kept a remnant. 
He left not himself without human witnesses, and he chose them 


JEROBOAM. 


337 


in one especial line. When lie let go his hold on other races and 
nations, who in rebellious perversity were struggling to be free of 
him, they “ sunk into polytheism ; ” they developed idolatry — the 
religion of the natural man. 

Idolatry is the only religious idea which man, unassisted by 
Heaven, is capable of developing. At first it was a simple form 
of idolatry, fire worship, Bel-worship. As idolaters became more 
and more separated from the divinely-enlightened line of Sliem, 
their idolatry became more and more gross and complex. Nimrod 
the rebel, on the Chaldsean plains, worshipped fire and the god 
Bel. After the dispersion of the families of earth from the tower 
of Babel this worship of Bel was disseminated over all the world ; 
and because idolatry is so much more congenial to the natural heart, 
than the pure, spiritual worship of a one, true, holy God, it began 
to gain a foothold even among the chosen children of Eber. 

Bel, the ancient tutelary divinity of Babylonia, the deity wor- 
shipped by Nimrod, was the chief god of all the Chaldaic nations. 
Cushites and Shemites, all save the line of Arphaxad, adored him ; 
and when Abraham was called out of Ur of the Chaldees there 
were added to the worship of Bel the Sun, the fire god, other idola- 
tries, and the moon was the tutelary divinity of Ur. 

This Bel, or Belus, represented the one supreme Being whose 
existence was an ineradicable idea. He pervaded the worship of 
all nations, becoming associated with other gods, until he was 
one deity in a mighty pantheon. He was the Osiris of Egypt,, 
the Helius, of Greece, the Apollo of the Latin. 

The Assyrian idea of their supreme being, of beauty, was not 
form, but strength. Their sculptures always reach after the ma- 
jestic. To-day their winged bulls stand in stately solemnity 
above the dust of their worshippers, the ruins of their temples. 
Belus was sculptured as an enormous bull with knotted muscles 
standing firm and hard; the very impersonation of power. This 
22 


338 


JEROBOAM. 


idolatry, and this form of the idol, spread through all Syria. 
Says Rawlinson : “ Could Chedorlaomer (who warred with the 
kings of Sodom, and whom Abraham conquered) have returned 
from his grave after fourteen centuries of sleep, he would have 
found little difference between the idolatries of his own day and 
of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar — save in splendor of offerings 
and an increase of music in the worship.” So well did this 
Baal worship suit the genius of the Orient, so impossible was it 
even in the space of fourteen centuries for that genius to attain 
anything higher, unhelped by the Spirit of God. 

The descendants of Mizraim flying from the plain of Babel, 
took the idea of Baal with them, and worshipped him under the 
similitude of the sacred bull ; he was to them Osiris, the father 
of all. In Egypt the captive children of Abraham imbibed their 
notion of calf -worship, which seems to have clung to them with 
amazing tenacity. The most tremendous judgments- of God failed 
to destroy their secret veneration for Baal. This developed at 
the very hour when they became an independent nation. As they 
stood at the foot of Sinai, impatient at the delay of Moses, they 
clamored for gods to go before them ; and their idea of divinity 
was a golden calf. There has been a question whether this calf 
meant Jehovah, being a cherubic representation of him; or 
whether it was an Egyptian god. It seems rather a confound- 
ing of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob with Baal, or Osiris, 
and the choosing the calf as the legitimate representation of him. 
Baal means lord, master, owner, ruler, and was first referred to 
the sun, the giver of warmth and light, without which nothing 
can exist. 

■Whenever there was set before the Israelites any temptation 
for Baal-worship, they at once relapsed into it as a nation ; having 
among them exceptions, God-servers, the witnesses of the Holy 
One. Afflictions brought back the people to their allegiance to 


JEROBOAM. 


339 


the true God ; and anon they fell away. During the one hun- 
dred and forty years from the beginning of Samuel's judgeship 
to the coronation of Rehoboam, the religion of Jehovah had been 
sedulously and consistently preserved by all the tribes. We have 
come now in their history to a time when ten tribes voluntarily 
forsook the revealed religion, and took instead idolatry, the religion 
of the natural man. 

Idolatry was the religion of the natural man from Cain to Jero- 
boam ; it has been the religion of the natural man from Jeroboam 
until to-day; and by this time a large portion of idolaters have 
got back to the exact form of Cain their archetype — self-righte- 
ousness, self-justification, intolerance. 

When a man does not worship the Lord his God, it makes 
very little difference in his guilt whether his idol is Baal, the 
sun wheeling in heaven, the golden calf-god, or — himself ! 

Milton embodies the idea of Baal in the lines — 

“ Than whom 

Satan except none higher sat, with grave 
Aspect he rose, and in his rising seemed 
A pillar of state ; deep on his front engraven 
Deliberation sat, and public care ; 

And princely counsel in his face yet shone, 

Majestic though in ruin ; sage he stood 
With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear 
The w’eight of mightiest monarchies ; his look 
Drew audience and attention still as night, 

Or summer noontide air.” 

Jeroboam, the immediate instrument of this change in Israel- 
itish worship, is first presented to us when Solomon was building 
Millo, and repairing the wall of the city of David. Jeroboam 
was then a young man, the son of an Ephrathite named Nebat. 
His father was already dead; fortunately taken from the sight of 
the fatal grandeur of his son. His mother, Zeruali, lived, and 
doubtless prided herself not a 1# Me on her boy. “He was," says 


340 


JEROBOAM. 


Scripture, “a mighty man of valor.” So prominent was he 
among his kinsmen and fellow-workers, that Solomon at once 
noticed him, and selected him from the rest, for especial dignity. 
“And Solomon seeing the young man, that he was industrious, 
he made him ruler over all the charge of the house of Joseph.” 

He “was a mighty man of valor.” We can imagine him in 
his prime ; the dashing athlete, who would soon show that he 
feared neither God nor man. 

One who mocked at toil and hardship; who was incapable of 
fear; who knew how to control his fellow-men; to beguile their 
hearts; who was just the rash, ardent, exuberant Saul-like 
nature, to delight the men of Israel. He stood at the head of 
“the house of Joseph” — of those mighty tribes, Ephraim and 
Manasseh. He was in the very position to exercise influence ; 
for Ephraim was a proud, turbulent, rebellious tribe; ever jealous 
of the supremacy of the house of Judah, and ever but half 
smothering revolt against the family of David. 

Years passed on, while Jeroboam, the mighty captain, was 
prominently before his people, and they were becoming accustomed 
to his authority, and to seeking his advice. 

During these years, Solomon had degenerated to an idolater, 
and God had already, by the mouth of the prophet, announced the 
division of the kingdom. 

Jeroboam was the man chosen by God to bear rule over the ten 
tribes. And Ahijah, the Shilonite, was the prophet to make this 
royal future known. Warned of God, Ahijah went forth toward 
Jerusalem, to meet the future king. Impelled by that power, 
which, often unrecognized, guides the smallest events of our lives, 
Jeroboam in Jerusalem projected a journey. 

Perhaps he was going forth on business. 

Perhaps filial love called him to the village home of his 
widowed mother, Zeruah; maybe he was bent on love making, 


JEROBOAM. 


341 


and some dark-eyed maid among the daughters, awaited his 
coming in an olive orchard on the sunny slopes. Poor soul, if 
this were so, the girl to whom this goodly captain should tell his 
tale of love, would have dark days and very heavy tidings, sore 
sorrows of wife and mother, as Jeroboam’s queen. 

Whatever was the cause of his going, he went well clad. He 
bought a new garment, and walked forth gaily, proud of his 
array ; little thinking that the royal purple, the monarch’s crown, 
awaited him in the future. Down he strode from the hill Zion 
into the field, and saw coming towards him a well-known form, 
Ahijah, the old seer ; who of late, with darkling brows and lifted 
hands, had cried out woe and vengeance, because of those temples 
of crime to Molech, Baal and Ashtoreth. 

Very likely Jeroboam gave the prophet good greeting; we 
imagine him to have been one of those politic men, who never 
throw asA^ay an ally, never lose an advantage, however dimly 
foreshadowed. 

The prophet responded singularly enough. They were together 
in the field, and he laid hands on Jeroboam like a highway 
robber, and seized his new garment. Then he behaved like a 
madman. He tore the cloak in pieces, but there was a singular 
method in his madness ; for the torn stripes were twelve. He 
turned to the wondering captain, and holding out the fragments 
of the new cloth, said : “ Take thee ten pieces : for thus saith the 
Lord, the God of Israel, Behold, I will rend the kingdom from 
the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to thee.” 

Never was a new garment spared so easily. For the ten torn 
strips of his gay apparel, Jeroboam should receive ten mighty 
tribes for his kingdom. Before his eyes swept instant visions of 
the coming glory ; he would be grand as Solomon ; allied to kings , 
wedded to royal princesses ; conqueror of nations ; founder of a 
dynasty. His heart was so lifted up, that he hardly heard the 


342 


JEROBOAM. 


stern voice of the prophet detailing the causes of Solomon’s for- 
feiture of the kingdom. If Jeroboam had but heard and laid to 
heart this part of the message, his fate would have been very 
different : “ Because they have forsaken me, and have worshipped 
Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians, Chemosh, the god of the 
Moabites, and Milcom, the god of the children of Ammon.” 

Unfortunately for Jeroboam, he was one of those who never 
learn anything from the dealings of Providence with other men. 

Another very important fact was stated by Ahijah, namely, 
that God said: “I will not take the whole kingdom out of his 
hand: but I will make him a prince all the days of his life, for 
my servant David’s sake. . . . But I will take the kingdom out of 
his son’s hand, and will, give it unto thee, even ten tribes.” 

Here it was distinctly explained, that so long as Solomon lived, 
Jeroboam was quietly to stand among those who served. His 
controversy was to be with Rehoboam. To say one word, to lift 
one finger to obtain royalty before Solomon’s death, would be 
rank rebellion. 

Still the prophet’s speech flowed on : “And it shall be, if thou 
wilt walk in my ways, and do that is right in my sight, to keep 
my statutes and my commandments, as David my servant did, 
that I will be with thee, and build thee a sure house, as I built 
for David ; and I will give Israel unto thee.” 

Here was made a condition, a promised reward, and there was 
also set a model. Jeroboam had now no reason, outside of his 
own unregenerate heart, to go astray. He knew all Jewish law; 
he knew the dangers and the crying iniquity of idolatry ; he knew 
what David’s life had been, and that this was the life he must 
live in childlike humility before his God; and the reward would 
be a sure kingdom for all his posterity. 

The prophet went his way. From that hour Jeroboam was a 
different man ; a change had passed over his spirit. He began 


JEROBOAM. 


343 


to question of his future, of his present position. He suddenly 
felt himself a king — every inch as great as Solomon ; yet here 
he wandered unattended on the public way, uncrowned, throne- 
less and sceptreless. He must wait until Solomon was dead, 
and who could tell how long Solomon might live? Perhaps 
until Pehoboam and Jeroboam were gray, old men, shorn of 
ambition, all pleasures palling on their senses. 

There was Solomon, nourished and cherished and pampered, 
shut out from danger, guarded on every hand ; and here was he, 
Captain Jeroboam, jostled rudely by the world, an accident or an 
enemy might make away with him any moment, before ever he 
became a king. He forgot that he was immortal until his work 
was done ; and that he was assured of the kingdom in the promise 
of the Unchangeable One : “ And I will take thee, and thou slialt 
reign according to all that thy soul desireth, and thou slialt be 
king, over Israel.” It was utterly impossible for Jeroboam to die 
before that word was accomplished ; floods could not drown him ; 
fire could not destroy him ; no arrow could find out a joint in his 
harness before he reigned, filling all his desires ; the prophet hinted 
of his long envy and ambition ! A thousand new cravings were 
struggling within him. Josephus tells us that after this prophecy 
Jeroboam “ could not keep quiet,” and that “ he endeavored to per- 
suade the people to forsake Solomon, to make a disturbance, and 
to bring the government to himself.” 

Solomon had already been warned, probably by the prophet 
Gad, of the future division of the kingdom, the consequence of his 
idolatry. Doubtless he heard of the prophecy of Ahijah, of which 
Jeroboam would make vain-glorious mention ; and now when the 
young captain began to urge his kinsfolk, and the malcontents, 
which are in every nation, to revolt, Solomon endeavored to kill 
him. 

Jeroboam found that his efforts to secure an immediate authority 


344 


JEROBOAM. 


were doomed to failure. God was not with him ; he had only 
shown his own insubordination and unbelief in endeavoring to 
press on before the Lord’s time. Abandoning a cause which he 
could not maintain he fled into Egypt. 

Since Solomon had married an Egytian princess, a new king, 
hostile to him, had taken the throne of Mizraim. This king, 
Shishak, offered an asylum to all the enemies of Solomon; before 
David died, Hadad, the Edomite, and his followers had thrown 
themselves upon the protection of Egypt. Hadad was then but a 
child, but he had grown to man’s estate, married into the royal 
family, and was now aided by Shishak to resist the power of Solo- 
mon. In Egypt Jeroboam remained until the death of the king. 
When he heard of that event, and probably a fleet courier carried 
at once the long-wished for news, he returned from Egypt to Pales- 
tine; but mindful of his former bootless haste, and grown wiser 
with the passing years, he retired to his own city, Zared, to await 
the course of events. Jeroboam was in no wise improved bv years; 
he was more prudent, more crafty, but far less honest and religious 
than when he stood the simple, indefatigable superintendent of 
Solomon’s building operations. During his long residence in 
Egypt, there is every reason to suppose, from the character of the 
man, that he yielded homage to the Egyptian gods, and took part 
in all the disgusting Egyptian idolatries. He was never the man 
to do as well as he knew how ; he had a plenty of worldly, very 
little heavenly wisdom. 

On him, however, the eyes of all Israel were set. He was to 
be their leader in the coming political strife. They knew he was 
bold and sagacious ; they remembered the prophecy of Ahijah. 

Therefore, as preparations were made for the solemn coronation 
of Rehoboam, Israel held back, and let the tribe of Judah take 
the initiative, making preparations for the gorgeous ceremonial. 
Judah was of the king’s family — his kinsmen in the flesh. The 


JEROBOAM. 


345 


capital, beautiful Jerusalem, was in Judah’s territory. The coro- 
nation, however, was to take place at a central city of Ephraim, 
Shechem, famous in Jewish story, and very frequently mentioned 
in the Bible. There the children of Israel had renewed, after the 
capture of Ai, their solemn covenant to be the Lord’s. 

One sad monotone running through Koheleth we have left until 
now — a father’s disappointment. He whose harem held a thousand 
wives and concubines, could leave but a “ fool ” to sit on his 
throne. He pours forth his distrust of the coming monarch, and 
Behoboam fully justifies that distrust. In the first part of his 
reign he plays the fool indeed. 

Yet after all, in some respects, he seems to the full as wise a 
man as his father. Solomon had succeeded in disintegrating his 
own powerful empire ; Iiehoboam knew, after his first mistake, how 
to make the best of a bad bargain, and prop a falling kingdom. 

Solomon came into his royalty under the most favorable cir- 
cumstances, and left all things crumbling to their fall ; Behoboam 
heired anarchy, and he managed to reign peaceably and leave his 
son as much power and wealth as he secured for himself. 

Hardly was the most splendid and powerful of the Hebrew 
monarchs laid in his tomb, than the oppressed seized the oppor- 
tunity of the coronation at Shechem, and rose in a terrible tumult*. 
They crowded to Behoboam for redress of grievances. We are 
apt to think of him as a boy, but he was forty-one years of age. 
Prudence, urbanity, benevolence on his part, would have saved 
him the loss of more than half his realm ; braggart defiance, auda- 
city and despotism, reduced him to be a petty prince, lording it over 
a corner of the territory where his father had swayed the sceptre. 

Yet poor Behoboam is what we might expect him to be; there 
had been far too much gold in his early surroundings. Gold 
couches, gold dishes, gold caparisons for horses, gold armor, gold 
powder on his hair ; he was a far-off Hebrew Miss Kilmansegg ; 


346 


JEROBOAM. 


and like that unfortunate, lie was ruined by a surfeit of the precious 
metal. There is more truth than fable in the story of the miseries 
of king Midas. 

Already were the wishes and welfare of Judah and Israel seen 
to be diverse. If Judah should come up to Shechem strong in 
a lineal successor of the late renowned king, Israel would come 
with the valiant Ephrathite, who could plead the promise of the 
Lord by the mouth of Ahijah. Therefore the ten tribes sent to 
Zared to call Jeroboam to appear as their head and spokesman at 
Shechem. 

Rehoboam was not wise enough to concede at once what was 
respectfully and reasonably demanded. Neither was he prepared 
instantly to refuse. He asked three days for consideration ; these 
days he spent rejecting the advice of the wise old councillors, who 
had added lustre to his father’s reign, and listening to the flatteries 
and braggardism of his younger comrades. These days Jeroboam 
no doubt was wise enough to use in strengthening himself in 
the hearts of Israel, and in encouraging the tribes to persist in 
their demand; at the same time, stirring up their jealousy against 
Judah. 

At the end of three days, the gross taunts, the insane defiance 
of Rehoboam infuriated the disaffected tribes. Soft words, honest 
promises would have destroyed the influence of Jeroboam, and 
made them loyal ; but this was not to be. No sooner was Reho- 
boam’s reply given — and we can imagine how the old men blushed 
and trembled at its idle boasts — when a shout arose from the ad- 
verse camp ; the ten tribes had taken up their song of . insurrec- 
tion — the Hebrew Marseillaise. As the Bourbons quailed at the 
sound of “ Allons, enfans de la patrie !” so the line of David was 
made to tremble at the cry : “ To your tents, O Israel ! ” 

Rehoboam heard it, and it was the signal of his defeat. Israel 
was no longer a great kingdom of the earth. 


JEROBOAM. 


347 


Jeroboam at once proceeded to strengthen himself. He probably 
retired to Zared for a short time until the people were in a mood 
to receive another king, and had fairly separated themselves from 
the house of David. Rehoboam meantime retired .to one of his 
country seats, and resolving to ignore the late action of the tribes, 
sent Adoram to collect tribute. This tribute had been the chief 
source of contention. It was cruelly heavy, and was ruining the 
power of the nation ; the imposts were so great that agriculture 
and commerce were suffering terribly through all the land. The 
people cordially hated Adoram, because he was the officer who 
levied these taxes ; and forgetting that if their wrath was due to 
any one, that one was the king, and not his unhappy treasurer, 
they stoned Adoram to death. On hearing of the fate of his officer 
Rehoboam was filled with terror ; fled to Jerusalem, for safety be- 
hind its mighty fortifications, and called together an army of one 
hundred and eighty thousand men. 

Seeing these preparations to reduce them to submission, the ten 
tribes resolved to resist, and felt that their first want was an able 
commander. They therefore sent deputies to Jeroboam, and 
probably brought him to Shechem, and there formally crowned 
him king. 

The tribe of Benjamin had ever been especially favored by 
David, who sought to conciliate the family and friends of Saul, 
the first king; Benjamin therefore clung to Judah, and remained 
faithful to Rehoboam. All the families of the Levites were also 
] 0 y a l — for the altar and . temple of their faith was at Jerusalem ; 
Rehoboam was nominally faithful to the religion of Jehovah, there 
was little reason to expect that Jeroboam would be so. The division 
was therefore nine tribes against three, but still numerically the 
people were almost equally divided, for Judah and Benjamin had 
always been among the most powerful tribes, and only Ephraim 
could in any wise compete with them. 


348 


JEROBOAM. 


Jeroboam at once established himself in Shechem, making that 
the seat of his government, his capital. The city lay between the 
mounts Ebal and Gerizim, which towered high above it ; some of 
the dwellings climbed the grape-clothed slopes of these two moun- 
tains; all around lay the fertile and beautiful plain of Moreh. 
Groves, orchards, gardens, verdant fields, girdled the ancient city 
with loveliness. 

Jeroboam, like the rest of his nation, had an eye for beauty ; a 
warrior, he properly estimated strength and a capacity for defence. 
His capital was in every way well chosen ; it was central, strong 
and fair. It had also the aroma of holiness lingering about it ; 
for it had been a Levitical town, and one of the six cities of 
Refuge. 

The words in Kings, “ Then Jeroboam built Shechem, and 
dwelt therein,” mean that he enlarged and improved the city : 
added to its fortifications, and, perhaps, built there a palace. 

He also built a town called Penuel, which has vanished from 
the earth. 

In the mean time, Shemaiah, a prophet of God, went to Reho- 
boam with the message : “ Ye shall not go up to fight with your 
brethren, the children of Israel : return every man to his house ; 
for this thing is from me.” 

The prompt obedience of Rehoboam, in disbanding his army, is 
the best thing which thus far we have heard of him. 

Jeroboam, taking counsel with fear rather than faith, began to 
think that if his people went up to worship at Jerusalem, the 
loyal Levites would lead them to return to their allegiance to the 
house of David, and he would lose his kingdom ; forgetting that 
for a specified reason it had been given him by the Lord ; and on 
one condition assured perpetually to his family. In all his his- 
tory, Jeroboam appears as an entirely faithless, irreligious man. 

He determined, therefore, to have holy places in his own 


JEROBOAM. 


349 


domains, and to give the people a form of worship differing from 
that at Jerusalem.; free from Levitical influence, and of a nature 
to attract and retain them. What more natural than that he 
should turn to Baal worship ? The Israelites had full* often 
served Baal ; he had been a household word to them for genera- 
tions ; and their evil hearts yet longed for his seductive rites. 
It was the religion they had seen practised in Egypt ; Jeroboam, 
himself had lately been a worshipper before the sacred bulls in 
Heliopolis. 

He was disposed to be very complacent to his people, to indulge 
them in everyway. Shechem, in Ephraim, was his royal dwelling. 
In Gad he had built the city Penuel ; now he chose Dati and 
Bethel for places of worship ; Dan was the ancient Laish, settled 
in the limits of Naphtali by Danites. Choosing this town as a 
principal seat of worship, the rily Jeroboam secured a place very 
far from Jerusalem, and o' j in which Dan and Naphtali were 
alike interested. 

Bethel, the other high place, had ever held a historic sanctity. 
Here Jacob had dreamed and vowed. The town belonged, in 
Jeroboam's day, to Ephraim. Samuel had been wont to hold his 
court of justice there, in his annual circuit ; it was near enough 
to Jerusalem to lie in the way of many going up to the Temple, 
and thus to beguile them. From the day when Jeroboam chose 
the spot as a place for his idolatries, Bethel, the House of God, 
was polluted by Baal worship, for three hundred years. 

Jeroboam now made two golden calves, such as were wor- 
shipped in Assyria, and were sculptured and painted in Egypt; 
such as Cushite and Shemite had adored since the days of Nimrod. 
These he exhibited to the great congregation of the people, saying 
— witli what simulated and dangerous kindness — “ It is too much 
for you to go up to Jerusalem. Behold thy gods, O Israel, which 
brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." 


330 


JEROBOAM. 


Is it thus a king should be a father to his people? 

The gods who had brought them up from Egypt? Truly 
these were gods, such as they had worshipped with music, feasts 
and dances, at the foot of Sinai ; and so the faithless nation ran 
greedily after their monarch’s sin, and worshipped in Bethel and 
in Dan. 

The Scripture notes two important facts in connection with 
Jeroboam. First, his instituting for his new kingdom a new 
national worship : formally taking Baal for their god in the place 
of Jehovah, and second, his ordaining a new national festival. 

The feasts of the Israelites were especially ordained for them 
by the Lord. They were in number three- — the Passover, the 
Pentecost, the Feast of Tabernacles. The National Fast, the only 
one, was the great Day of Atonement, five days before the Feast 
of Tabernacles. The Passover was celebrated between the four- 
teenth and twenty-first days of 'the month Nisan — the first month 
of the religious year. Pentecost was kept fifty days later, Taber- 
nacles came in autumn, after the gathering of the harvests. 

Jeroboam set apart a new day for observance, “ the fifteenth day 
of the eighth month, even the month which he had devised in his 
own heart.” He was evidently doing all that he could to oppose 
the laws and ordinances of God. 

The heart of Jeroboam is several times mentioned. It was 
open to the scrutiny of God, and that God had seen his passionate 
craving for royal power, when Jeroboam was only superintendent 
of the public works. The Lord knew all his vain castle building 
of what he would do if he were king. He sent -by Ahijah, and 
told him he should reign according to all that his heart desired. 

A sad privilege, for his heart desired very little that was good — 
and in this respect was not very different from many other 
hearts. 

Here again he is spoken of as devising out of his own heart a 


JEROBOAM. 


351 


new time for a new festival. The historian is careful to make it 
evident that the hand of the Lord was not with . Jeroboam. 

For these, his ungodly and idolatrous doings, Jeroboam got a 
name that has ever clung to him. He is ever mentioned with 
the expressive phrase — “ he who made Israel to sin.” 

To sin in one’s own proper person is bad enough ; to drag 
others into crime is infinitely worse, and adds tenfold to one’s con- 
demnation. He who carries with him, in his sinful career, souls 
who but for him would have lived in peace and well-doing, piles 
up for himself a tremendous weight of iniquity. It would be 
better for such an one, in the very beginning of his history, to 
have a millstone hanged about his neck, and be cast into the sea. 

At this feast which Jeroboam devised, he, like other idolatrous 
kings, acted as chief priest, offered the sacrifices on the altar, and 
burnt incense. It was a privilege not allowed to Theocratic 
kings. 

At one of these feasts at Bethel, where Jeroboam was officiating, 
he was arrested in his impious work by a message from the Lord. 
It was not a joyful errand on which the prophet, a nameless, 
unhappy, and ill-fated man of God, came. 

Jeroboam, in royal state, uniting the offices of priest and king, 
offices divorced by God’s decree since the days of Melchizedek, 
stood by his altar offering incense to the golden calf, Baal. 

The prophet cried out against the altar, and uttered one of 
those singular prophecies, over which unbelievers have thought 
fit to distress themselves — as in the case of the prophecy about 
Cyrus — calling a man by name long before he and his parents are 
born. The prophet named Josiah, who was crowned king some 
three hundred years later. A very hard thing in man’s view — 
nothing to Him before whom thousands of ages are a little 
space. 

The nameless prophet cried and said : u O altar, altar ! Thus 


352 


JEROBOAM. 


saith the Lord, Behold a child shall be born unto the house of 
David, Josiah by name ; and upon thee shall he offer the priests 
of the high places that burn incense on thee, and men’s bones 
shall be burnt on thee.” 

He paused. It would be easy for an enthusiast from Judah to 
speak thus, these idolaters might think, they must have a sign ; there- 
fore, the power of Jehovah over their altar must be evidenced. 

The man of God held out his hand. “ Behold, this is the sign 
which the Lord hath spoken ; behold the altar shall be rent, and 
the ashes that are upon it poured out.” 

The wrath of the interrupted king and idolater rose high at 
these words; stretching forth his arm in command, he cried: 
“ Lay hold on him!” But as the royal guards sprang to obey, 
the king’s arm withered and stiffened, still held out in an attitude 
of defiance; and “he could not pull it in to him again.” At the 
same moment the altar was rent, and brands and sacrificial ashes 
were scattered far and near upon the ground. 

The life of Jeroboam was full of telling situations ; this was 
one of them. The only man who could heal his paralyzed arm 
was now roughly held in custody by the guards. 

Jeroboam need not entreat a god who could not save his own 
altar ; here was a man stronger than Baal, and he was forced to 
humiliate himself before him. 

When his hand is restored, something of the old time, free and 
easy, soldier disposition of Jeroboam flashes out; he forgets anger 
in gratitude, and he invited the man of God to his palace, pro- 
mising refreshments and a reward. • 

Not only the prophecy, but the sudden and violent death of 
the prophet, would have been calculated to arrest most men in an 
evil course; but the record of Jeroboam is that he went on in sin, 
and to his inaugurating the worship of Baal, and intercalating 
feasts, he added the crime of taking vile persons and consecrating 









JEROBOAM. 


353 


them for priests. Thus as king, he made himself the absolute 
head of this idolatry, assigning the object of worship; establishing 
the festivals ; offering sacrifice ; and elevating to the priestly office 
whomsoever he would. 

Jeroboam was by no means at rest in his kingdom; for between 
himself and Judah there was constant disturbance, probably a 
sort of guerilla warfare, as we read of no pitched battles during 
Kehoboam’s life ; unless Jeroboam aided his old friend Shishak. 

Hearts which may not be reached by the prophecy of a coming 
evil, are sometimes softened by a present sorrow*. 

Jeroboam seemed to have in his life almost every opportunity; 
every variety of training, “but was nothing made better, and 
only grew worse.” 

The king had established for himself a dwelling in Tirzah, a 
place long famous for its beauty. Solomon remembers it in his 
Song, “ Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah ! ” 

The city stood to the north of Mount Ebal, in the midst of 
sheltering olive groves. Here the ; queen and her children lived, 
and this suggests one virtue which we may remark in Jeroboam. 
Despite the example of the kings of Judah, of David and Solo- 
mon ; and despite his own reckless nature, Jeroboam seems in all 
his life to have retained a sturdy matrimonial virtue. We read 
of no harem and no concubines, but we have instead the touching 
story of these two royal parents, anxious and weeping at the 
bedside of their first-born son, the gracious Abijah. The heir 
was better than his parents. Perhaps his grandmother, Zeruah, 
was a godly woman, and had trained him in holiness ; perhaps 
Ahijah, the Shilonite, had prayed for him and instructed him. 
God was remembering the pious prince, and was calling him from 
the evil to come. The father and mother cannot give him up, 
and Jeroboam, in his anguish, remembers that noble old man, 

Ahijah, who foretold for him the kingdom. He hopes that, as 
23 


354 


JEROBOAM. 


once before, some good word will come from the prophet. He 
forgets that he has despised warnings and advice, and has done 
all those evil deeds which must inevitably draw down on him a 
curse. Perhaps he thinks that the pitying prophet will intercede 
for that beloved child’s life. 

In their hour of distress, how often do wicked men seek refuge 
in the piety of some one whom in prosperity they have neglected, 
and whose Christianity they have despised. 

Disguised, sorrowing, reluctant to be one moment absent from 
her sick son, yet hoping much from her embassage, and anon 
fearing much, as she remembers their ill desert, the wife of Jero- 
boam reaches Ahijah and receives heavy tidings. The blind 
prophet sets before her all the sin of her godless household. She 
has called to her mind the abundant mercy of God, who exalted 
Jeroboam from the midst of the people to be a king; an example 
was furnished him, which he would not follow. The exceeding 
iniquity of Jeroboam is set forth, then vengeance is denounced 
against him and his family until “ all be gone.” Violent deaths, 
dishonored corpses, bleaching skeletons in street and plain ; these 
pass before the hapless woman, as if the prophet’s words were some 
hideous panorama. Yet more, the fate of all Israel, the apostate 
people, is shown the queen ; and then she hears the fatal words : 
“ Arise thou therefore, and get thee to thine own house ; and when 
thy feet enter into the city, the child shall die.” 

We can imagine that mother’s woe ; she was not to close her 
child’s eyes ; never to see him in life again. With her every home- 
ward step, there was for him one pulse beat less, one shortening 
breath ; and as she entered Tirzah’s gate, the child gave up his 
spirit, the one saved soul in the house of Jeroboam. 

A man can never sin for himself alone ; like Jeroboam, he causes 
the death of his children, the anguish of his wife, the destruction 
of all connected with him, or dependent upon him. 


JEROBOAM. 


355 


Iii the eighteenth year of Jeroboam, Abijah, the son of Relio- 
boam, being king of Judah, attacked him as a rebel. The fate of 
battle was against the worshipper of Baal ; Jeroboam lost all the 
flower of his army, fled ignominiously, and was forced to yield 
several cities to his conqueror, among them Bethel, the high place. 
In four years more he died : “ Struck by the Lord ; ” died a hope- 
less death, leaving Nadab, his son, a vile idolater, to hold the 
kingdom for two hapless years, which should end with his assassi- 
nation. “ For I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the 
iniquities of the fathers upon the children, to the third and fourth 
generation of them that hate me.” 

Jeroboam exhibits the heart left to its own devices. “ Thou 
shalt reign according to all that thine heart desireth,” was said to 
him, and his first acts were rebellion against God, and idolatry. 

Paul, in Romans, teaches ns that the idea of one Supreme Being 
is implanted in every soul. The pagans know in their hearts that 
there is but one God. This knowledge does no good unless the 
man has a holy belief in the God whom he knows. 

Man is a religious being by nature, at the same time he is a 
fallen and sinful being ; he is averse from God, and as his nature 
impels him to have some sort of religion, he betakes himself to 
idolatry, lifting up the creations of his own imagination, or the 
forms of nature, between himself and the God whom he both fears 
and hates. “ He invented idolatry,” says Professor Shedd, “ and 
all those gay religions full of pomp and gold, in order to blunt 
the edge of his sharp spiritual conception of God, which was 
continually cutting and lacerating his sensual heart.” 

And no one need wonder that races of men developed idolatry 
so soon, for even now we see in one short human life space for 
the innocent, religious, tender-hearted child, to become the bold 
unbeliever, mocking at judgment and the future doom ; declaring 
Nature to be God, and himself her prophet. “ Man,” says Pro- 


356 


JEROBOAM. 


fessor Shedd, “ so distorts and suppresses the consecrated idea of 
the Deity, that some speculatists assert that it does not belong 
to his constitution ! ” 

Other speculatists assert what is equally abhorrent to religious 
common sense, namely, that a knowledge of God, of immortal 
life, of right and wrong, of the necessity and manner of salvation, 
was gradually developed in the human soul. All history teaches 
the ingenuous mind that the only religion the human soul can 
develop is idolatry. Whatever is better than that comes from 
Heaven, by direct revelation. As man cannot invent for the One 
God a name which He will accept, so he cannot develop a plan of 
salvation, or religious belief which He will accept. Those who 
do not believe that God in the very beginning of man’s life 
upon earth preached to him a full gospel , must believe that the 
terms of salvation are not the same for all men ; that God varies the 
terms of his salvation to suit the changeful eras of this lower world. 

Or, they must believe that up to a certain point in religious de- 
velopment very many generations were irretrievably lost, because 
they had not developed far enough. Accepting neither of these 
theories, they are forced to a third, that is, that the religious 
knowledge at which men have now arrived is redundant ; very much 
more than is needful to everlasting safety • that a small part of 
what he knows as truth will be enough to save him ; and of this 
part, our religious development men seem to think that every 
individual may select for himself what he shall intellectually 
believe, and what he shall rest upon as a means of salvation. 

Not so ; in the first hour of our danger and exile, God made 
known salvation through a Redeemer ; through Divinity in flesh ; 
to him a line of believers looked as the Coming One for four 
thousand years until he came. They were enabled to hold fast 
their faith, only by the influence of the Holy Spirit. Whom the 
Spirit did not thus instruct, fell into idolatry ; first a monotheistic 


JEROBOAM. 


357 


idolatry, then polytheism, until their monstrous pantheon made 
each soul a Gehenna. 

For almost two thousand years, fhe pilgrim church, journeying 
worn and travel-stained down the ages, has carried the memory 
of her Lord, the God-man, died, risen and ascended ; and yet, as 
in her earliest days, looks with longing eyes for her Coming One, 
who shall return to her in power, and bring her to Himself. 


XVII. 


JEZEBEL AND HER DAUGHTER. 

THE STATUS OF WOMAN WITHOUT RELIGION. 


IFTY years after the death of Hiram, king of Tyre, the 
friend of Solomon, Eth-baal, the father of Queen Jezebel, 
reached the Tyrian throne, by the murder of Phelis. Eth- 
baal was one of the most depraved of Phoenician sovereigns. 

The friendship of David and Solomon, the close intimacy with the 
Jews, and the diffusion of Jewish knowledge and religious light, had 
done much to modify and purify the belief and customs of the 
Tyrians. 

In the half century that had passed since those happy days, vice 
and idolatry had more and more abounded, and the iniquities of 
the Zidonians culminated, when Eth-baal, the chief priest of As- 
tarte, the Phoenician Venus, became unlimited monarch. Eth- 
baal had reigned for twenty years, when Ahab, son of Omri, be- 
came seventh king of Israel. Weak and wicked, not without 
some good impulses, the slave of his own desires, and the tool of 
whoever of those near him was strongest, Ahab lives in history to 
show 11s, that weakness is often the worst kind of wickedness. 

The capital of Israel was now Samaria, a city built on a hill by 
Ahab’s father, Omri. For six years, Omri lavished all his 
wealth and ingenuity upon this city, and, thus suddenly grown up 
into magnificence, it became a capital sadly famous in Syrian his- 
tory. Ahab, from his childhood, was accustomed to the idolatry 
358 



JEZEBEL AND HER DAUGHTER. 359 

instituted by Jeroboam, the worship of the golden calf. This calf 
was undoubtedly Osiris or Bel, but it represented the earliest 
and simplest form of idolatry, a monotheism ; with this calf-wor- 
ship were entwined many Jewish ideas, and it was in Israel, until 
Ahab’s day, divested of the shocking rites and additions which it 
had already gained in Chaldea, Phoenicia, and Egypt. 

Into this calf-worship Ahab entered cordially, because other 
people did. But he was soon to exceed in wickedness and idolatry 
all who had been before him. 

His first care was to strengthen his position by an alliance with 
some powerful nation. This was the more needful, as the rival 
kingdom of Judah was ruled by Asa, whose “ heart was perfect 
with God all his days,” and whose government was strong, flourish- 
ing and peaceful. 

At this time, there was in the court of Eth-baal, his eldest 
daughter, a princess noted for wit, bravery, and beauty, Jezebel. 

The Biblical account of Jezebel is confirmed by Menander, the 
Tyrian historian. The only exception which can be taken to the 
Scriptural narrative by the captious is, that Eth-baal is called king 
of the Zidonians. It must be remembered that this name, Zido- 
nians, was the generic term applied by the Jews to all Phoenicians, 
and that now the power of Zidon was waning in the greater glory 
of imperial Tyre, as the morning star pales its “ ineffectual fires” 
before the rising sun. 

Born after her father became a king, Jezebel had been reared in 
luxury, and from her earliest years the priestly office of her 
parent had drawn her passionate spirit toward the worship of his 
gods. The Tyrians were a luxurious and cultivated people; the 
early life of Jezebel was one gorgeous pageant. She dwelt among 
those “ princes of the sea,” who sat on thrones wearing “ broidered 
garments;” accompanied by a chorus of singing maidens, who 
kept time to the oars of the rowers, she floated about the harbors 


360 


JEZEBEL AND HER DAUGHTER. 


of Tyre, in one of those gorgeous .galleys, which Ezekiel de- 
scribes, which spread forth embroidered linen from Egypt for their 
sails, from which floated upon the waves blue and purple drape- 
ries, brought from distant isles; whose benches were carved ivory, 
whose boards and masts were cedar. 

The princess walked through the city ; lo, here were the busy 
fairs, where men traded in all manner of riches, “ brass, silver, tin, 
ivory, ebony, horses, emeralds, linen, coral, agate.” She saw the 
men of Arvad set ‘in watch upon the walls, their glittering armor 
gleaming against the back-ground of sky or sea. From tower to 
tower called the Gammadim night and day, and their shields 
covered the walls. Ambassadors, seeking the royal city, brought 
gifts to the princess of the house; and, among the rest, came sons 
of Israel, with presents and soft words, to seek a queen. 

It was better, thought the ambitious Jezebel, to be a queen in 
Samaria, than a princess in Tyre. Therefore she went forth in 
glorious state, a proud, resolute, unscrupulous girl, to begin a 
career of crime; to immortalize herself in vice. 

Over swelling hills, through fertile valleys, across broad flower- 
strewn plains, swept the royal cortege, the princess and her escort, 
the trains of servants; the camels and mules laden with the 
bride’s treasures ; the showy groups of dancing women ; and among 
all, conspicuous in their sacred garments, with cruel, sensual, 
dark faces, the priests of Baal and Astarte, whom the wicked and 
fanatic princess took with her to increase the corruption of her 
future subjects. Through the fertile territories of Asher, yielding 
fruit and corn ; across the fields of Zebulon ; among the vineyards 
and olive groves of Manasseh, and into the domains of luxurious 
Ephraim, the seat of the kingdom, went Jezebel. From Samaria 
Ahab came forth to meet her in a procession, where music and 
songs and flowers expressed the welcome of the stranger queen. 

From that moment of meeting, the yielding and sensuous 


JEZEBEL AND HER DAUGHTER. 


361 


Aliab resigned himself to the dominion of his audacious, self- 
reliant, cruel wife. Daughter of a royal priest, and wife and 
mother of kings whom she ruled, Jezebel was the Catherine de 
Medicis of ancient days. 

Her entrance into Samaria was a turning-point in the history 
of Israel. Her husband was a puppet in her hands ; her reck- 
less licentiousness spread a torrent of vice over the land. This 
Oriental queen, shameless as the goddess Astarte, was stern and 
strong as Bel himself; her fierce, masculine nature knew no 
thought of pity, no softening hours ; her rage blazed up into those 
fearful vows, by which the Shemitic leaders have become so terri- 
ble. From this woman, wild, gaudy, luxurious, fearless, fierce 
and conscience-seared, all the Clytemnestras, Bloody Marys, 
Lady Macbeths, and Cleopatras, of history have caught their 
tone. 

Almost the first act of Jezebel in Samaria was to remodel the 
religion of the state. The more morally depraved an idolater is, 
whether that idolater is a South Sea Islander, a Hindoo, a Ro- 
manist, or a Mammon worshipper, the more zealous does he be- 
come in his idolatry, because thus he best can hew and hammer 
every tracery of God out of his soul. Professor Shedd, speaking 
of pagans, says, “ The contrast between the Divine purity, and the 
sinfulness that was wrought in their heart and will, rendered this 
constitutional, inborn idea of God a very painful one.” 

Immediately after the arrival of Jezebel, Ahab built in Samaria 
a temple to Baal, after the fashion of the one in Tyre, where his 
father-in-law was priest. Here Baal was worshipped with all the 
ceremonies of those gross conceptions which had struggled forth 
from the perverted original idea of God. Besides this temple of 
Baal, Ahab “ made a grove that is, an oracular grove to As- 
tarte, where her image was set up. 

So infatuated was the queen with her idolatry, and so imbued 


362 ' 


JEZEBEL AND HER DAUGHTER. 


with the Phoenician ideas of splendor in worship, that she enter- 
tained at her own table as part of her household, four hundred 
and fifty priests of Baal and four hundred of Ashtaroth. 

“ With these came they, who from the bordering flood 
Of old Euphrates to the brook that parts 
Egypt from Syrian ground, had general names 
Of Baalim and Ashtaroth. 

For those the race of Israel oft forsook 
Their Living Strength, and unfrequented left 
His righteous altar, bowing lowly down 
To bestial gods. 

With these, in troop 

Came Ashtaroth, whom the Phoenicians call’d 
Astarte, queen ot Heaven, with crescent horns ; 

To whose bright image, nightly by the moon, 

Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs.” 

For these idolatries, the historian thus sums up the ways of 
Ahab : “ And it came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for 
him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, that he 
took to wife Jezebel, the daughter of Eth-baal, king of the Zido- 
nians, and went and served Baal, and worshipped him.” 

“ And Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to 
anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him.” 

“ But there was none like unto Ahab, which did sell himself to 
work wickedness in the sight of the Lord, whom Jezebel his wife 
stirred up.” 

Three children of Ahab and Jezebel are mentioned in Scrip- 
ture; Ahaziah, Jehoram, and Athaliah. Children, who were weak 
as their father, cruel and wicked as their mother. 

While Samaria was the seat of Government and the headquarters 
of idolatry, Ahab’s favorite residence was Jezreel. Here the 
royal family made their abode; here the three unhappy children 
of godless parents passed their early and only peaceful years. 

Ahab had a taste for splendid architecture, and though he 


JEZEBEL AND HER DAUGHTER. 


363 


built several cities, palaces and temples, he exhibited his 
proclivities principally in Jezreel. This beautiful city stood in 
the plain of Esdraelon ; and, as palace, tower, park, seraglio, and 
pleasure-garden rose to ornament it, it became the Versailles of 
Israel. 

One man, one character alone, made the reign of Ahab note- 
worthy. But for this solitary name, the reign and doings of Ahab 
and Jezebel would have been written most probably in a single 
sentence. When the land was overspread with the abominations 
of Phoenician worship, a man hated by Ahab and Jezebel above 
all others appeared upon the scene — the Prophet Elijah. He 
denounced a famine as the punishment of sins against the Lord 
of earth and heaven, and for three years and six months neither 
rain nor dew fell from the pitiless sky. Josephus tells us that 
this famine spread far beyond the confines of Israel. The Bible 
story refers to it as impoverishing Zidon, where, in Sarepta, Eli- 
jah took refuge. Menander also mentions a terrible drought 
during the reign of Eth-baal. Perchance wherever Baal and 
Astarte were worshipped this dearth prevailed. 

Three years of poverty and suffering broke the rebellious spirits 
of the children of Israel ; their new gods were impotent, they re- 
membered Him who had threatened famine as the penalty of de- 
parture from him. The king also began to tremble ; he knew the 
holy worship that prevailed in Judah; he had heard the traditions 
of the people Israel; his kingdom was sown with monuments of 
the power and glory of the Eternal. Being a rational intelli- 
gence, unable to unmake himself, “ he could not unmould his im- 
mortal essence, and eradicate all his moral ideas.” He feared the 
One God, and he feared his Prophet. Therefore, when, myste- 
riously as he had appeared and disappeared, Elijah came again, 
Ahab, at his command, and at the glad promise of rain, gathered 
together the priests of Baal and Astarte, to contend with the Lord 


364 


JEZEBEL AND HER DAUGHTER. 


on Carmel. In his call, Elijah mentions eight hundred and fifty- 
false prophets; again he appeals to Israel that he stands alone 
against four hundred and fifty. 

There were hundreds of thousands in the cities and tribes of 
Judah ; among them all were only seven thousand who had not 
bowed the knee to Baal. 

Ahab collected priests and people for a grand trial of strength 
between God and Baal. The nation looked on to see fair play, 
caring very little who was victor. They feared Elijah because 
they had felt the weight of his prophecy ; they have forsaken 
Jehovah, and Baal has deceived them ; with true Eastern indif- 
ference they are ready to shout for the strongest, without a care 
which that may be. 

Meantime, Ahab, rejoicing in hope of rain, and in the prospec- 
tive safety of his mules and horses, established for himself a pavi- 
lion, and got ready for a feast with a few chosen friends. He was 
an easy-going man ; he dared not kill Elijah, though he hated 
him; the eight hundred and fifty prophets were more expensive 
and less profitable than horses or architecture; let Jezebel look 
after her favorite worship ; if Baal went now into ignominious 
obscurity, the golden calf at Dan was left to Ahab still. 

Meantime, Jezebel, sixteen miles off, in the seraglio in Jezreel, 
is unconscious of the danger of her prophets. Perhaps she may 
be marking, with ambitious pride, the child Athaliah, and already 
forecasting a royal alliance for her. 

The dread day wears to evening. Baal’s sacrifice is uncon- 
sumed. The sun god has sent no kindling ray upon his altar, 
but, leaping from heaven, celestial fire has devoured on Jehovah’s 
shrine, sacrifice, wood, stones, and water in the trench, and the 
admiring people have sent up a great shout, “ The Lord, he is 
God ! ” 

It is the death -knell of Baal’s prophets. Ahab is feasting, 


JEZEBEL AND HER DAUGHTER. 


365 


drinking and singing, careless of their fate ; Jezebel is painting 
her face and tiring her head in Jezreel. The excited people hem 
them in like a wall of fire, and strong arms deal death, until 
Kishon runs red with blood, and, as in Deborah’s time, the ene- 
mies of the Lord are swept away by “ that mighty river, the river 
of Kishon/’ 

Night was falling when Ahab reached home : he had bad news 
to tell, and might as well be done with it. He went to his wife’s 
apartment; perhaps she sat before a mirror, adorning herself with 
jewels which were to snare somebody’s soul. He told her the 
prophets were slain. It was Elijah’s work ; he, Ahab, had had 
nothing to do with it; no, he was feasting in the joy of his heart 
for coming rain, and even now the sound of the rushing wind, 
the swirling of the rain against the casement, and the thought 
that the heaven was black with water-freighted clouds, drove 
from him the agonies and despair and death-shrieks of the pro- 
phets of his gods. 

Jezebel thought of her priests rather than of the end of the 
famine. She turned in a fury from Ahab, and summoned a fleet 
messenger. She took one of the terrific oaths scattered through 
history : “So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not 
thy life as the life of one of them [the prophet] by to-morrow 
about this time.” This was her message to Elijah, and we are 
simply left to wonder why she informed him of her intention, 
and why she did not commission the messenger to kill instead of 
threaten her enemy. 

The next revelation of Jezebel’s character which comes to us, 
is in the famous history of Naboth’s vineyard. Here the weak- 
ness of the king, and the wickedness of his wife, are especially ap- 
parent. Denied the vineyard which he covets, Ahab throws 
himself on his couch, and refuses to eat. News of this unwonted 
dejection goes to Jezebel, and forthwith she marches to his apart- 


066 JEZEBEL AND HER DAUGHTER. 

ment and demands the reason. As he unfolds it, the proud 
Tyrian listens with unmitigated scorn. She looks on Ahab as a 
weak boy, idly fretting for an advantage which he should boldly 
grasp. 

With lofty irony she asks him, “ Dost thou now govern the 
kingdom of Israel ? ” Her idea of government is, that it is for 
the benefit of rulers and not of the ruled. She believes in no 
limitations of power : kingcraft to her means despotism over body 
and soul. “ Arise; eat thy bread, and let thy heart be merry : I 
will give thee the vineyard of Naboth.” 

Here we see what is often remarked, that while a bad man may 
find some bounds to his wickedness, a thoroughly bad woman dares 
everything, and will scale the very heights of heaven to compass 
her designs, like “ Moloch, sceptred king,” — 

“ No, let us rather choose, 

Arm’d with Hell flames and fury, all at once, 

O’er Heaven’s high towers to force resistless way.” 

Jezebel broke every commandment of the moral law, command- 
ments not written on the sapphire tables alone, but on the fleshly 
tablets of the heart, just as remorselessly as she broke off the 
scarlet clusters of pomegranate flowers to deck the flowing masses 
of her hair. 

In this matter of Naboth, she shows her unscrupulousness. 
She wants a vineyard, and the easiest way to get it is to murder the 
owner. She will kill poor Naboth that Ahab’s appetite may re- 
turn before he is hungry. Her power in the state is shown in the 
forged letters and the possession of the king’s signet-ring. Her 
craft is seen in making use of Jewish law, a law which she de- 
spises, to obtain her end. She hates God, and would slay his 
servant, one of those sacred seven thousand holy souls doubtless ; 
and she does it under pretence of honoring God. Divided by ages 


JEZEBEL AND HER DAUGHTER. 367 

4 

and by continents, this Jezebel must have been twin-soul to Ham- 
let’s mother. 

Now, when the evil deed is done, and word has come to Jezebel 
that Naboth is dead, and his lands are forfeited, without one 
thought of remorse, the .queen goes to Ahab elate, saying, u Arise, 
take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, which lie 
refused to give thee for money” — (alas ! poor Naboth, this was all 
thy crime) — “ for Naboth is not alive, but dead.” 

Ahab, however, is just as bad as his wife. Too weak to exe- 
cute, too dull to plan, he yet takes advantage of all, and with 
alacrity rejoices in the spoils of sin. Ahab’s joy was suddenly 
turned to terror, for, as he walked exulting in the vineyard of 
Naboth, Elijah, with his hairy garment and leathern girdle, ap- 
peared before him. The guilty king started back in mortal terror 
— : this prophet came and went like some angry phantom. Ahab 
gasped : 11 Hast thou found me, O mine enemy ? ” 

“ I have found thee ! ” cried Elijah. “ Him that dieth of 
Ahab in the city, the dogs shall eat; him that dieth in the field, 
the fowls of the air shall eat ! ” 

No sooner was the curse pronounced, than Ahab humbled him- 
self; “ he rent his clothes, and put sackcloth on his flesh, and 
fasted, and lay in sackcloth, and went softly.” 

Then the Lord spoke again to Elijah. “Seest thou how Ahab 
humbleth himself before me? Because he humbleth himself I will 
not bring the evil in his days.” 

This shows us that our merciful Father regards the prayers 
and the repentance of wicked men ; and though their repentance 
is not unto life, he removes from them judgments and saves them 
out of trouble when they call on him. 

From the slaughter of the wicked prophets at Kishon, the wor- 
ship introduced by Jezebel had not recovered strength : the pre- 
sence of Elijah and his school of prophets, and the friendly inter- 


368 


JEZEBEL AND HER DAUGHTER. 


course that was resumed with Judah, did much to check the 
spread of gross forms of idolatry. 

During Ahab’s reign, Ben-hadad, king of Damascus, made two 
campaigns against Israel, and in each was defeated with great loss. 
Three years after his last victory, Ahab and Jehoshaphat, the godly 
king of Judah, entered into an alliance, and Jehoshaphat went in 
state to Samaria to make a visit. Here he saw his future daugh- 
ter-in-law, the curse of Judah, the princess Athaliah, probably the 
youngest of Ahab’s children ; a woman, in boldness and wicked- 
ness, exactly like her infamous mother. 

Jehoshaphat had a young son, Joram. This prince had already 
been led astray by the worship of Baal, still practised in groves 
and high places by many of the people. This Joram was proba- 
bly already married, and had a daughter, Jehosheba, who was 
afterwards united to the High Priest of the Temple. Jehoshaphat 
had been prospered beyond any of his predecessors since the days 
of Solomon ; his fear rested on all the nations about. Philistines 
and Arabians brought him tribute; his army was well-equipped, 
every soldier was “ a man of valour.” “ He had riches and honor 
in abundance.” This made him a most desirable ally, and when 
he went to Samaria, Ahab and Jezebel received him with every 
mark of affection. They feasted Jehoshaphat and his followers, 
killing “ sheep and oxen in abundance,” and consulted him on all 
affairs of state. Jehoshaphat, in turn, was very cordial; he most 
likely informed Ahab of his plans for the future; how he should 
richly endow his six younger sons, and establish each in a fenced 
city, while the kingdom should be the portion of Joram. 

All these plans were repeated in the apartments of the queen 
Jezebel, in the ears of young Athaliah ; her daring mother sketched 
for her a royal future. To be sure the way to it lay through 
seas of blood, but when did the house of Ahab shrink from that? 

As Queen Catherine de Medicis planned, in secret conclave, the 


JEZEBEL AND HER DAUGHTER. C69 

slaughter of the Huguenots, years before it took place ; so did 
Jezebel suggest those cold-blooded murders which should well 
nigh exterminate the royal family of Judah. 

Meanwhile the friendship of kings was cemented by marriage 
between their children. Jehoshaphat was to go to war with 
Ahab against Benlmdad, and Joram was to come to Samaria for 
his bride Athaliah. 

Very likely the wedding was among the festivities of Jehosha- 
phat’s greatly prolonged visit ; while the hum of warlike prepara- 
tions mingled with the songs and revelries of the marriage guests. 

Joram and Athaliah going to Jerusalem, assumed royal state. 
Joram was, perhaps, regent during his father’s absence, and for 
aught Athaliah knew, her gracious father-in-law might be killed 
in battle. The plan of the exchange of armour between Ahab 
and his ally, savors of the craft of Jezebel. 

The war ended in disaster. As the fatal day closed in, Israel 
was seen scattered like sheep without a shepherd, flying here and 
there in panic. Judah had heard the proclamation : “ Every- 
man to his own country, and every man to his own house,” and 
gladly were they going homeward. Ahab, wounded unto death, 
had stayed himself up in his chariot with grim resolution, 
while from between the treacherous joints in his borrowed armor 
the blood ran down into the floor of the chariot — an ominous 
pool. 

“Turn thine hand,” faltered the dying king, and the chariot 
driver turned toward Samaria. The victorious Syrians moved 
before the king’s failing sight, like the clouds in the sunset sky — 
strange, airy forms ; faintly to his dull ears came the trumpet 
notes, sounding retreat ;• far off over the hills went the hosts of 
Judah, and he saw them dimly as trees walking. Long gone 
scenes were before him; — jocund youth; his marriage day; the 
priests of Baal and Astarte, with their odious rites ; the weird 
24 


370 JEZEBEL AND HER DAUGHTER. 

figure of Elijah foretelling doom; the stern fierce face of his 
Phoenician queen ; his children, in their baby sweetness, and in 
their reckless, cruel youth. There would be no one to weep for 
him. His strength grows less, the chill of death is on him, his 
hand relaxes its grasp on the chariot. The sun is going down, 
and shoots a last level ray between the sheltering hills, and across 
the oval plain, in the midst of which rises the city, the nation’s 
watch tower. With a groan the king sinks down dead in his 
bloody chariot, and on pressed the driver up the steep ascent, and 
calling the servants of his lord, they carry in dead Aliab, and lay 
him at the feet of Jezebel. 

While they buried Ahab, and proclaimed Ahaziah, Jehoshaphat 
had reached his own kingdom, and was met by the prophet Jehu, 
with the close question : “ Shouldst thou help the ungodly, and 
love them that hate the Lord ? ” 

This is a question which Christians should lay to heart. He 
who loves the Lord should never ally himself in any manner with 
the foes of his Master. 

The seer’s question referred to the late marriage as well as to 
the battle. The question stirred up the king to renewed zeal for 
his God ; but while he did much for the conversion of the nation, 
he could do nothing for Joram and Athaliah ; for already, as her 
mother before her, Athaliah had gained unbounded influence over 
her husband, and was, following still the maternal example, “ his 
counsellor to do wickedly.” 

Meantime Jezebel, as queen-mother, had lost none of her pres- 
tige. Her weak-minded son yielded even more completely to 
her dominion than his father had done. He was a worshipper 
of his mother’s gods ; base, cowardly, superstitious. 

Only two years of reign were allowed him; having fallen 
through a lattice, he became very ill, and in his extremity findino* 
his own gods did not restore him, he sent to ask aid of Baalzebub, 


JEZEBEL AND HER DAUGHTER. 


371 


god of Ekron. Like his father, he was met by a prophecy of 
evil from Elijah, the ordained opponent of his house, and in a few 
days died, leaving the kingdom to his brother, so that Jezebel was 
still queen- mr *her, “ first lady of the kingdom.” 

Jezebel maintained close and dangerous intercourse with her 
daughter Athaliah ; she had exulted in the birth of Athaliah’s son, 
glad that descendant of her own should lord it over Judah. 

The kingdoms of J udah and Israel were now cursed by the 
sway of Jezebel and Athaliah, ruling through the yielding son and 
husband. The worship of God languished; idolatry lifted its 
head ; famines and pestilences walked abroad ; wars and rebel- 
lions were on every hand ; poverty, anxiety, secret hate, and open 
vice, made either kingdom a gate of Gehenna. 

At this time Jehu, the avenger upon the house of Ahab, was 
anointed king. Jezebel had now been a widow, reigning through 
her sons for fourteen years. H^r son Joram being wounded in 
battle by the king of Syria, had gone to. his mother, at beautiful 
Jezreel, to be healed. Ahaziah, the son of Athaliah, went down 
to Jezreel to visit his wounded uncle, and his royal grandmother. 
He left Athaliah, his mother, as queen-regent at Jerusalem ; for 
within the year Joram, her husband, had died of a horrible dis- 
ease, sent as a curse upon him by the Lord. After two ) r ears of 
sore sufferings, the unhappy king died, and was denied a royal 
burial. He was hastily entombed near Jerusalem, but not among 
his kingly ancestors, and Athaliah found herself one step nearer 
the throne. She sought to be absolute monarch in name as well 
as in power. When her son Ahaziah left her, to go on a visit to 
his like-minded relations, Athaliah, accorded regal honors, and 
holding the helm of state, found how good a thing it is to reign ! 
She was served not by love, but by fear ; the eyes of her subjects 
glared hate upon her. They saw her white hands ever red with 
blood. Who but Athaliah had counselled the cruel murder of 


372 


JEZEBEL AND HER DAUGHTER. 


those six princely sons of Jehoshaphat, and their friends among 
the princes of Judah ? 

For this hate, so long as she could curb it with a strong hand, 
Athaliah cared not; she held levees, and sat in ‘jdgment, and 
betimes walked through the places, and so walking heard her 
grandchildren shouting at their play. They were young children 
all, but their baby laughter woke no tender womanly feelings in 
Athaliah’s bosom ; she hated them every one, because out of them 
should come a king for Judah, and then some stranger would fill 
her place, as queen-mother. 

At Jezreel, Joram, son of Jezebel, was recovering, and was 
entertaining right royally his guest and nephew, when Jehu, 
driving furiously, with his army at his back, was spied, by the 
watchman on the tower of Jezreel, sweeping, like a war cloud, 
across the plain. 

Surmising evil, Joram sent forth two messengers to demand the 
cause of Jehu’s coming; each went over to the enemy. The 
two kings of Israel and Judah then each made ready his chariot, 
and with a small retinue went out to overawe the rebel captain. 

Face to face were they placed, Joram and Jehu, each standing 
in his chariot. 

“ Is it peace, Jehu ? ” falters the monarch, made a catiff by the 
burden of his crimes. 

“ What peace,” thunders Jehu, “so long as the whoredoms 
of thy mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many?” 

At these bold words Ahaziah and Joram turned to fly. They 
were in the bloom-lined way along the royal gardens of Jezreel, 
the fatal plot of ground for which Jezebel had murdered Naboth. 

Jehu, the mighty captain, drawing his bow with his full 
strength, shot an arrow at Joram, which entering between his 
shoulders went out through his heart. The king fell dead, and 
his chariot stopped. 


JEZEBEL AND HER DAUGHTER. 


373 


“Bidkar,” said Jehu to his chariot driver, u take him up and 
cast him into the portion of Naboth, the Jezreelite; for remember 
how that when thou and I rode together after Ahab, his father, 
the Lord laid this burden on him.” 

But Jehu could not forget that the accursed blood of Jezebel 
ran in the veins of Ahaziah, of Judah; therefore, he pursued him 
flying, and dealt him his death blow at Gur. His servants 
carried him to Megiddo, and there he died. 

Passing through the country to establish himself in his new 
kingdom, Jehu entered Jezreel. 

This was one of the chief places of the kingdom ; here Ahab 
had built his ivory palace, and here Jezebel maintained the ' 
temple of Astarte. The palace was on the eastern side of the city, 
and the tower of the seraglio was at the gate of entrance. 

Jezebel knew that as queen-mother, the most eminent person- 
age in the land, she was the especial mark for the vengeance of 
Jehu ; she resolved to brave danger, and to make a last effort to 
maintain her power. If she must now die, she would die royally ; 
she would face her destroyer as became a Tyrian queen. 

Still there was for her one last hope ; to establish himself more 
firmly, Jehu, according to eastern usage, might take her for his 
wife, especially if she could win his admiration. Jezebel was 
beneath or above the refinement of hesitating to marry the mur- 
derer of her son ! 

She had but little expectation of this however, and with iron 
resolution decked herself to meet a probable death. She painted 
her eye-lids with antimony; put false bloom upon her pallid cheeks ; 
braided her dark locks as in her younger days of pride, and 
crowned herself with a regal diadem ; on neck and arms and 
hands, she put jewels of the costliest work of Tyre ; her robes 
were of blue and purple, from far-off isles ; the embroidered linen 
of Egypt, the woven gold of Damascus ; in all her glory, the 


374 


JEZEBEL AND HER DAUGHTER. 


ancient princess stood the rival of her own dauntless, brilliant and 
most wicked youth. 

Like Cleopatra, she would cry, — 

“ Give me my robe ; put on my crown ; I have 
Immortal longings in me — 

I am fire and air, my other elements 
I give to baser life.” 

Jezebel was not unversed in the history of her adopted land. 
She knew how to taunt, and she called to mind the story of 
Zimri, who usurped the throne, and reigned but seven days. 

As the chariot of Jehu rolled in at the city gate, followed - by a 
great train of friends, the crowned and painted “ descendant of so 
many kings ” leaned from the window of the seraglio tower and 
called to him : “Had Zimri peace, who slew his master ?” 

Behind her at the window gathered her eunuchs, and court 
ladies. Jehu looked up, undazzled by the brilliant decorations 
of the idolatress whom his soul loathed, and cried, “ Who is on 
my side. Who ? ” 

Several eunuchs behind Jezebel made signs to him. 

“ Throw her down,” said Jehu, bluntly. And they flung the 
queen from the tower. She fell directly before the foaming and 
champing horses of Jehu’s chariot; her blood flying up over the 
wall, and over the gaily caparisoned steeds, as they trampled her 
under feet, and the heavy wheels rolled over her, crushing costly 
robes, and jewels, shapely limbs and face of mocking beauty, into 
an indistinguishable mass. 

When Jehu had feasted, he remembered his last victim. He 
called his servants, saying : “ Go see now this cursed woman and 
bury her, for she is a king’s daughter.” 

But Jezebel was to have no burial. “Dogs shall eat Jezebel 
in the portion of Jezreel,” had been the word of Elijah, and now 
it was fulfilled ; for while Jehu ate and drank in the ivory house. 


JEZEBEL AND HER DAUGHTER. 


375 


the dogs of Samaria devoured the flesh and even the bones of 
J ezebel, daughter of Eth-baal, king of Tyre. 

Athaliah, in her palace at Jerusalem; received the tidings of 
the death of her mother, son, and brother, at the hands of Jehu. 
The news was as a war cry to her. She was athirst for blood ; 
mad for power. 

Between her and the crown w T ere only the lives of some half 
dozen or so* of little children, a paltry consideration to Jezebel’s 
daughter. 

She has two enemies in the land that she knows, the holy 
high priest, Jehoiada, and Jehosheba, his wife, Athaliah’s step- 
daughter. Piety in Judah is now at a discount; Athaliah has 
managed to trample out nearly every vestige of goodness or 
patriotism ; she has been afraid to kill the high priest ; she has a 
superstitious dread of him and of his God, so she lets him alone 
in his house, while she calls guards as ferocious as herself, and 
leads them into the harem nurseries to slaughter the innocents,. 
Poor babes, they are cursed for the drops of her blood in their 
veins ; for the life tide of Jezebel, princess of Tyre ! 

YVe all know how Jehosheba was before the queen, hiding and 
saving one little year old babe, her pretty nephew, whose youn; 
mother was Zibiah, a girl from Beersheba. 

Athaliah has six years of triumph : six years of royalty 
according to all that her heart desires ; pomp, luxury, debauchery, 
idolatry. She has had Jezebel for her pattern and teacher, and 
proves an apt scholar. 

Six years she riots, and is fiercely glad, while all around her 
the smothered hate of her subjects rages like fires in a volcano, 
until the day of eruption — the day for the lava tide of wrath and 
reprisals is come. 

When that day came, a great, glad shout, and a wild clash of 
music rent the air : a new sound in the miserable city. Another 


376 


JEZEBEL AND HER DAUGHTER. 


cry, the acclaim of a new monarch ! Out of her palace, across 
the court, rushed Athaliah, in her bedizened robes, in a towering 
rage, ready to proclaim a hundred deaths, and fill the city with 
rebel blood. The people stand about the Temple, they give her 
way; she enters the outer court, and is face to face with that calm 
seven year old boy, who stands by a pillar with the crown of 
J udah on his brows. 

Athaliah is her mother’s daughter ; she is Tyrian in face and 
heart. The boy before her is a Jew; Jehoshapliat and Zibiah are 
copied in his features, where years after shall crop out a line or 
two of Jezebel. 

“ Treason ! Treason ! ” cries Athaliah, rending her gold-sprin- 
kled garments. There has been a terrible treason years ago. 
There is a long account of unavenged murders, brothers-in-law 
and grandchildren, to be settled. They that use the sword must 
perish by the sword. Therefore, they drag her forth into the 
common way and dispatch her, and because she is of the blood of 
Ahab and Jezebel, she may have no burial. 

The earth is rid at last of Jezebel and her daughter. These 
are women without religion. Here are samples of womanhood 
set free of God’s laws and worship. For a woman to cut herself 
loose from God is not for her to lose power ; no, but it is for her 
to have and to wield power like a devil. Eternal law places 
woman by man’s side. Is she godly, then she helps him on 
toward Heaven ; is she godless, lo, she is “ his counsellor to do 
wickedly.” 

Says a pleasant writer in a recent pamphlet : “ I venture to 
assert then that woman’s social inferiority in the past has been, to 
a great extent, a legitimate thing. To all appearance, history 
would have been impossible without it, just as it would without 
an epoch of war and slavery. It is simply a matter of social pro- 
gress — a part of the succession of civilizations. The past has been 


JEZEBEL AND HER DAUGHTER. 


377 


inevitably a period of ignorance, of engrossing physical necessi- 
ties, and of brute force — not of freedom, philanthropy and 
culture.” 

This is the statement of a fact. We can go back of the fact for 
its reason. Why has an era of social bondage and of war been 
necessary? Why has the past been an epoch of ignorance and 
brute force ? Because humanity cut itself loose from God ; be- 
cause of irreligion ; because the impiety of the Cainitic and Ham- 
itic races rose up like a flood, and carried away purity and justice 
and godliness, almost wholly from the earth. Where impiety has 
abounded, woman has been debased, lias been made a bond-slave, 
has been, too often, denied a soul. 

But, say some, this was the fact even in the Shemitic line, in 
the Hebrew nation ; what Saxon woman now would wish to ex- 
change her status for that of the women of Palestine two thousand 
years ago? Now we think that under the Theocracy the position 
of woman was very much more one of social and intellectual 
equality than is generally conceded. Sarah, “ my princess,” and 
Rebecca her daughter-in-law, seem to have had and used as many 
rights and privileges as any one would desire. 

Certain agitators of the present day would fancy they had 
made a vast stride forward, if they could lift a woman into the 
Presidential chair of the United States; but, after all, they would 
be no farther on in social progress than the year thirteen hundred 
and twenty before Christ, when Deborah judged Israel. “ Ruth 
and Naomi could not read ! ” cries Sylvain Mareehal. We have 
the same, no less and no more, reason for asserting that Boaz could 
not read. The accomplishment was neither so needful nor so uni- 
versal in those days. 

Mr. Gladstone, speaking on the Marriage Amendment Act, 
says, “When the Gospel came into the world, woman was ele- 
vated to an equality with her stronger companion.” This is the 


378 


JEZEBEL AND HER DAUGHTER. 


spirit of the Gospel, but while the spirit of the Gospel may be the 
theory , it is not always th e practice of the day. Let the Gospel be 
in the heart as well as in the head, let Gospel intention mould the 
letter and practice of law as well as sentimental discussion, and there 
will need be no more outcry about disabilities. 

Says Jean Paul: “ Woman, both before and after being a mother, 
is a human being, and neither the maternal nor conjugal relation 
can supersede the human responsibility, but must become its means 
and instrument,” and the first grand and chief demand in virtue of 
this human responsibility , is godliness. A woman owes it to her- 
self, to her sex, to the age in which she lives, to be religious. In 
proportion as she is godly, she does her part toward solving that 
knotty problem of the day, “ What is woman’s position, and what 
her work ?” 

In godless days and nations, where one woman towers high in 
power, as did Semiramis, Jezebel, and Athaliah, her sisters lie in 
abject misery and shame. This powerful and godless woman does 
nothing to lift others up; her elevation is not the elevation of her 
sex, of the human race, scarcely even of her own family, for god- 
lessness is selfish, and neither works nor hopes beyond its own im- 
mediate advantage. 

In a godless age, a woman may be seen, like one in France, 
dragged about the streets in a chariot and worshipped as a god^- 
dess, as a living impersonation of “ Reason,” so-called. But while 
this is being done, before her eyes, one portion of her sisters are 
led to the guillotine, and another, amid shame and slaughter in 
the streets, are turned to fiends. 

People prate to some extent about women’s unsexing them- 
selves. Nothing so thoroughly unsexes a woman, so eradicates 
her finest qualities, and destroys her claim to being respected, as 
ungodliness. 

When the Countess of Richmond and Lady Bartlett were Jus- 


JEZEBEL AND HER DAUGHTER. 


379 


tiees of the Peace ; when Mistress Bowse sat on the bench at as- 
sizes and quarter sessions gladio cincta, when Countess Pembroke 
was ' hereditary Sheriff, and Christina was a queen, woman was 
not so unsexed as by those against whom Isaiah cried, and has 
kept on crying until to-day, “ The daughters of Zion who are 
haughty, and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes, 
walking and mincing as they go;” women devoted to “ the 
bravery of tinkling ornaments,— chains, bracelets and mufflers, 
bonnets and ornaments, headbands, tablets and earrings ; change- 
able suits of apparel, mantles, wimples, and crisping pins.” 
Because of women like these, Israel was well-nigh destroyed; 
while the prophecy of Huldah moved the people and their king 
to a new covenant with the Lord. 

“ Success silences.” “ There is nothing so successful as suc- 
cess.” Those women who have conquered prejudice, who have 
taken and. have held a noble place in the world, who have truly 
elevated womanhood, who have helped to bring won tn back to 
that moral, spiritual equality which God gave her in the begin- 
ning, have been godly women. It is true, there have been very 
great and shining lights in art, science, literature and civil govern- 
ment, among women who had genius without religion ; but their 
work was for themselves, their renown was their own ; they nei- 
ther taught nor helped other women to be worthy of their creation. 

This broad work has been left for godly women, has been often 
pursued in such silence, that all we see of it is its result, as we 
can trace some hidden stream by the lush verdure and beauty of 
the meadow through which it flows. 


XVII. 


JONAH, 

THE STUMBLING SAINT. 


MONG those whom the Prince of Dreamers saw going on 
a pilgrimage, were Mr. Feeble Mind, and Mr. Beady to 
Halt, who limped along in company. Good people in 
the church have frequently found themselves unable to 
compassionate their often-failing brothers ; but the patience of the 
Lord is gre°t, and he bears with those whom men would soon cast 
out ; even ometimes choosing them to do for him an especial task. 
The Lord does not always work with strong, bright, well-tempered 
instruments. 

One of these timid, querulous, selfish brethren, was sent on an 
important errand to Nineveh, and his name and character are pre- 
served for us in Scripture, not only because he is one of a numerous 
class, but because in his history we have illustrated the singular 
benevolence of God’s dealings with men. 

Children seize upon the story of Jonah, as a fragment of a 
legalized fairy land ; he seems like a figure which has stepped 
out of the Arabian Nights, with the added glory of having been a 
real personage, and one whom they may read and speculate about 
as much at they choose. To children of an older growth, like 
himself, Jonah has furnished a curious study in mental philosophy, 
his character is so full of contradictions ; he is one moment absurd, 
selfish, callous to human suffering, dastardly; and anon is honest, 
380 



JONAHA 


381 


fearless, and generous. However, on the whole, Jonah is a man 
doomed to make a very unpleasant impression upon the world at 
large ; and will never become a hero, or a popular idol. 

The history of Jonah is so unique, contains so many startling 
revelations, and is r.o different from the ordinary progress of 
human events, that many critics, who have set themselves up as 
censors over God’,; v/ord, have been inclined to reject the whole or 
a large part of tho story as fable. Many of the German critics call 
the supposed improbabilities of this narrative mere fictitious or 
fanciful ornaments, as if God, in his Book, pandered to a de- 
praved human taste for the extravagant and impossible : others 
claim that the unparalleled incidents related are simply allegorical, 
or parabolical in origin and design. 

We are prohibited any of these conclusions by the fact that 
Scripture never beguiles its readers by offering a fable in the guise 
of an absolute historical truth : and, moreover, by the express 
words of our Saviour, who confirmed the most wonderful part of 
the Prophet’s experiences, and made them typical of himself. Of 
this, Wordsworth says admirably : “ Here is an observable instance 
of the uses of the Gospel in confirming the Old Testament. By 
this specimen of Divine exposition, our Lord suggests the belief 
that whatever we may now find in the Old Testament difficult to 
be understood, will one day be explained, and perhaps seen to be 
prophetic and typical of the great mysteries of the gospel : and 
that, in the meantime, it is an exercise of our faith, and a trial of 
our humility, — a Divinely-appointed instrument of our moral 
probation. And it is because they are strange and marvellous, 
that such histories as those of Jonah and Balaam are the best tests 
of our strength of faith.” 

Jonah was probably of the earlier prophets. He lived after' 
the reign of Jehu, and prophesied before or during the reign of 
Jeroboam the second; his date is most likely about eight hundred 


382 


JONAH. 


and sixty before Christ. He was some three-quarters of a century 
later than Homer and Hesiod, and perhaps a cotemporary of Dido, 
the foundress and queen of Carthage. 

Jonah was the son of Amittai, and his birth-place was Gathe- 
pher, a town of Zebulon. The Territory of Zebulon bordered on 
beautiful Lake Gennesaret, and Jonah’s early years were spent in 
scenes afterward made sacred by the presence of the Son of Man, 
as he lived in Nazareth, Capernaum, Cana and Nain. 

The first prophetic mission of Jonah was congenial to one who 
was by nature a time-server, and in whose bosom very much of the 
old* leaven of unrighteousness strove with in-dwelling grace. The 
mission, moreover, would have been most pleasing to any patriotic 
and benevolent soul, for he was to bear to Jeroboam Second the 
word that God saw the loss and bitter affliction of Israel, and that 
the people had no helper; therefore, lest the name of Israel be 
blotted out, the Lord would return to them, and save them by the 
hand of their king. Agreeably to this prophecy, the king was 
enabled to reconquer the ancient territory of the nation, “ from the 
entering in of Hamath to the sea of the plain.” 

The great work of Jonah’s life, however, w T as one against which 
he rebelled with all his strength. He was no fiery, zealous Elijah, 
his whole soul kindled into courage by his love for his God. He 
was no patient, earnest, unflinching Jeremiah, who would speak 
his message, come what might. He was only Jonah, who one 
hour recognized the power and -greatness of his God, and the next 
believed that he could outwit him, or get beyond the reach of his 
arm ; he was only Jonah, who felt as if his own pitiful life were 
worth the lives of a hundred thousand of his fellow men ; only 
Jonah, who regarded his own credit as- a prophet beyond the 
safety of souls ; only Jonah, whose weak vision full often could 
reach no further than the narrowing horizon of this earthly life. 

His errand was to Nineveh, “ the bloody city,” whose mer- 


JONAH. 


383 


chants were “ multiplied above the stars of heaven,” whose 
crowned ones were like the innumerable hosts of locusts, and 
whose armed men were like grasshoppers for numberless myriads. 

Nineveh, like Babylon, had been founded by Nimrod. That 
mighty hunter, having established one city on the banks of the 
Euphrates, went north some three hundred miles, and built Nine- 
veh on the Tigris. This city afterwards became^ the great rival 
of Babylon in wealth and splendor. As Babylon was the enemy 
and the victor over Judah, Nineveh was the arrogant master of 
Israel. 

Like Babylon, Nineveh was as notorious for wickedness as for 
strength ; it matured earlier in power and in iniquity, accomplished 
its race, and sank into so profound and starless a night, that for 
twenty-five hundred years no eye of man rested on its buried idols 
and palaces, and no stranger’s foot disturbed the stillness of those 
paved ways, where chariots once # raged in the streets, where valiant 
men walked in scarlet, where. had sounded, day after day, “the 
noise of the whip, and the noise of the rattling of wheels, and of 
prancing horses, and of jumping chariots.” 

Among its sovereigns Nineveh numbered Sargon the cruel, 
Shalmaneser the warlike, Sennacherib, and Sardanapalus the mag- 
nificent. 

According to the computation of Bonomi, the city was but nine 
square miles in area less than Babylon, and was almost twice as 
great in extent as London. Layard supposes it to have been an 
oblong, thirty-four miles in its greatest diameter. Its ruins now 
comprehend parks, temples, fortified enclosures, and stupendous 
palaces, each of which was probably capable within itself of 
sustaining a siege. The population of Nineveh, in Jonah’s day, 
may be estimated by the fact that there were “more than sixty 
thousand infants there, unable to distinguish between their right 
hand and their left.” 


384 


JONAH. 


The wickedness of the “ great city ” had now come up before 
God, and Jonah was commissioned to go and “ cry against it.” 

On receiving this command, instead of preparing himself to 
obey, Jonah began to consider what to do. He who hesitates is 
lost. When we begin to bring up our own views and preferences 
against the performance of plain duty, we are on dangerous ground 
indeed. 

Jonah had but one fault to find with his Divine Master, and 
that was, that the Lord is “ gracious and merciful, slow to anger, 
and of great kindness, and repenteth of the evil.” He had heard 
this character of God from the days of Moses ; he had seen it ex~ 
emplified in past history and in his own day, and without pausing 
to consider that to these very qualities of Omnipotence he owed 
his life and whatever hopes he might have of the future, he began 
to believe them very much in the way of his own renown as a 
prophet. 

The intense selfishness of Jonah is something wonderful to be- 
hold, even among selfish humanity. His pride had been greatly 
gratified by the fulfilment of his prophecy concerning the con- 
quests and success of king Jeroboam Second. He now reasoned 
concerning Nineveh, first that at his prediction the city would be 
greatly alarmed; next, that fear would bring repentance, then 
that repentance would obtain mercy from a gracious God, and 
that consequently Nineveh would be saved in spite of his pro- 
phecy. 

This, one would suppose, a consummation devoutly to be hoped 
for; but not so. To go and prophesy destruction upon the invin- 
cible city ; to wait and behold the ruin ; to return home while 
every ear was tingling, and every heart was quailing at the tre- 
mendous judgment announced by his mouth, would be a mission 
worthy of Jonah’s powers ; but to be the means of the repentance 
of Nineveh, and a lengthening out of the probation of that city ; 


JONAH. 


385 


to be the instrument of mercy rather than of wrath, was a degra- 
dation in Jonah’s eyes. Go to Nineveh and stultify his own 
predictions? Not he. He did not object to travelling, and he 
meant to get himself out of reach of his Master as soon as possible ; 
one thing was certain, he would not go towards the Tigris. 

In Jonah was very largely developed that characteristic of the 
Jewish nation — exclusiveness. The Jew claimed salvation as his 
right ; the favor of God was one of his hereditaments. He con- 
sidered it beneath the dignity of Almighty God to be interested 
in any creature save an Israelite. The farther the nation feitfrom 
its high estate, the more widely it departed from God, the more 
paramount became its contemptuous hate for other nationalities. 
Abraham, the father of whom they boasted, was a shining exam- 
ple of religious brotherhood ; he had Abimelech and Ephron and 
Melchizedek for his friends; his descendants became narrower in 
their views as they became less spiritual in their experiences. 
Never was there a narrower- minded saint than Jonah ; he preferred 
death rather than being the instrument of salvation to Nineveh. 
He would, if possible, have forbade the sun to light or rain to 
refresh a Gentile, and he meant to do his part to keep the sun of 
Divine truth and the reviving of Divine grace from the aliens 
from Jacob. Just here he was to learn his lesson, God’s father- 
hood, his creating and providing interest in all the works of his 
hands. It was a lesson that the apostles and Paul had also to 
learn. God showed Jonah that he nourished not only the Rose 
of Sharon and the cedar of Lebanon, but the wild gourd of Assy- 
rian plains. 

Far off, in the Spanish peninsula, was a city called Tarshish ; 
thither the Phoenicians sent their trading vessels. The son of Zebu- 
Ion had heard strange tales of this land; it was an earthly para- 
dise full of wonders; thither he would go; it was quite on the 
other side of the world from that fated city of Nineveh. The 
25 


386 


JONAH. 


port of departure for him would be Joppa, whence since Solomon’s 
time vessels had gone out to trade along the Mediterranean 
coast. 

He arose, therefore, and fled with haste through the western 
territory of Manasseh, across Ephraim, with its crowded villages, 
into the narrow seacoast country which the Philistines had held 
for years against all the forces of Israel ; where, swarming in 
Gaza and Ekron and Gath, they worshipped Dagon, and whence 
they swept forth to ravage the land of Jacob. At the extreme 
northern limit of this territory, Solomon had built Joppa, when 
he was trading in company with Hiram, king of Tyre. Since 
then Joppa -had been a busy port, and here Jonah, to his great 
delight, found a vessel about to sail so far away that it Seemed to 
him that it was going even beyond the reach of Heaven. Alas 
for Jonah, if it could have been so ! 

The prophet does not seem to have lacked means; he paid his 
fare, was entertained on the vessel as an honored passenger ; and 
as the ship spread its white wings to fly away as a dove, Jonah 
stood on the prow, seizing the blue distance with his eager eyes, 
and imagining that he was going out of the presence of the Lord. 

When the armies of Damascus asserted that the God of Jewry 
reigned over the hill countries only, they were soon taught that 
he was equally strong in the valleys ; and now Jonah was to And 
that his arm stretched out over the sea; that he “ held the waters 
in his fist,” and “ taketh up the isles as a very little thing.” 

Before long a furious gale arose. “ There was a mighty 
tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken.” 

We have here a very vivid picture. The ship tosses on the 
waves at the mercy of a constantly increasing storm. The sailors 
and captain are at their wits’ end : they cast out the cargo, 
because all that a man hath will he give for his life; and as the 
laboring, creaking vessel seems every instant likely to go down, 


JONAH. 


387 


they address themselves to preparation for death, and each man 
calls upon his god. 

Tyrians are there, who shriek to Astarte, fair Venus, offspring 
of the sea ; Zidonian mariners, who cry out after Belus, king of 
men, and guardian of the day ; there are Philistine estrays, who 
howl to Dagon, the fish-god ; Egyptians, who remember great 
Isis ; the sons of the isles and Iberians, who now despair of ever 
again seeing the pomegranate groves of lovely Spain. 

Amid the babel of voices; amid adjurations to that strange 
pantheon man has preferred to his Maker, the ship-master sud- 
denly perceived that one tongue was silent ; one suppliant was 
absent, one God was unsought. He remembered that a Hebrew 
of noble aspect had taken passage on his ship; and he had heard 
that the God of the Hebrews possessed singular power, and was, 
in a very especial manner, an answerer of prayer. 

Strange to say, this Hebrew was in the lower part of the ship, 
sound asleep amid the tumult of the elements, and the wild con- 
fusion of human tongues. A long journey and great mental 
distress had exhausted Jonah, and he slumbered profoundly; 
perhaps also the poor wretch, who had never before seen salt 
water, was sea-sick. If he were not, he richly deserved to be. 

“What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, call upon thy God, 
if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not ! ” 

Thus adjuring him, the ship-master brought him forward, and 
they found the crew and passengers prepared to cast lots — the 
ancient fashion of determining vexed questions. 

The lot having fallen upon Jonah, the prophet was at last con- 
vinced of his error, and frankly told his history. 

A great awe of the Lord and of his recreant prophet fell upon 
the listeners. But now the violence of the tempest increased ; 
the waves leaped up as if to snatch a victim ; the winds howled 
like unappeased demons. 


388 


JONAH. 


“ What shall we do to thee, that the sea may be calm?” asked 
the seamen. 

For once Jonah plays the man. “ Cast me forth to the sea. 
So shall the sea be calm unto you ; for I know that for my sake 
this tempest is upon you.” 

The conduct of these heathen sailors is most admirable. The 
sea seems a nurse of noble qualities in human souls. The 
mariners “ rowed hard to reach the land.” They strove, but 
vainly; for, unconsciously, they were contending against God. 
Seeing the futility of their efforts, they prayed the Lord to forgive 
the deed they did, and as their last resort cast Jonah into the 
boiling waves. 

The prophet yielded himself with firmness to his fate. When 
he sank under the foaming billows, lo the sea ceased from its 
raging, and all was calm and placid as a summer noon. 

The waves fell ; the winds were held in leash again ; softly 
from the prow slipped the waters ; light kissed the distant hills, 
and lay on the sparkling brine ; and they were speeding on toward 
Tarshish, as if their course were aided by the compelling of in- 
visible hands. 

They looked over the hushed sea in amaze ; the man they had 
cast forth did not once struggle, gasping to the surface ; some god, 
they thought, had seized him, a desired victim, and carried him 
down to pearl and coral caves, where Tritons and Mermaids 
dwell. 

They could have imagined nothing more wonderful than what 
really occurred, for “The Lord had prepared a great fish to 
swallow Jonah ; ” wherein he should be conscious for three days, 
and from which he should escape unharmed. 

Over this part of the story, many men have proven themselves 
as great stumblers, as was Jonah at his very worst. Those repro- 
bates, who think that the words of the Lord are to be received 


' JONAH. 


389 


like those of many men, cum grano salis, have made very great 
difficulties over the adventures of Jonah. 

The fish does not necessarily mean a whale, (as the E. V. has 
it,) but any sea monster. Doctor Philip Schaff says: “ We sup- 
pose it was a shark— the white shark — Squalus carcharius, also 
called lamia , which is found, to this day, in the Mediterranean, 
sometimes as long as sixty feet.” 

Heubner relates an instance of a sailor who, in an inauspicious 
hour, went down the yawning throat of one of these monsters, yet 
was preserved, and lived to tell the tale. 

Heubner’s account may be perfectly true, but we put infinitely 
more confidence in the story of the Prophet Jonah. 

The prophet here becomes a type of One far greater than him- 
self — even of the Son of Man. 

It is very seldom that in flying from duty one reaches his 
loftiest honors ; here the Lord shows us “ that it is neither of him 
that runneth, nor of him that willeth, but of God that showeth 
mercy,” that we arrive at any good. Jonah was for three days 
buried in the sea ; Christ for the same time was inhumed in the 
earth. Jonah emerged from the depths to preach repentance; 
Christ rose from his grave to bring life and immortality to light in 
the Gospel. 

Trouble sets those men praying who have in them any spark 
of the Divine life. The Lord acknowledges poor, selfish, stum- 
bling Jonah as his servant, and now we see him in his calamity 
calling upon God. He found that the long-suffering and mercy 
of God were his only hope ; he had thought them over-abundantly 
exercised to the Gentiles ; he realizes at last that even prophets 
have sore need of the lovingkindness of the Lord. 

Being cast safe upon the “ beloved land,” Jonah took leisure to 
recover himself ; and yet made no motion to go to Nineveh. 

Another time came the command: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that 
great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.” 


390 


JONAH. 


Warned by past experience, Jonah went upon his errand, and, 
entering into the gate of the city, he cried aloud : “ Yet forty days, 
and Nineveh shall be overthrown ! ” 

The word of the prophet came with power; conviction was 
carried to the hearts of all. The charioteers and warriors in the 
busy ways ; the workmen plying their tasks ; the shop men in the 
streets ; the guests at their feasting ; the courtiers in the palace ; 
the king on his throne; even the beggars, who, in wan-eyed 
misery, paced the narrow lanes, believed the word, and were in 
terror at the coming overthrow. 

The warning entered the palace, and the king came down from 
his throne, rent his robes of broidered Tyrian purple ; cast aside 
his jewels, wrapped himself in sackcloth, and, like Job, sat in 
ashes. 

This fast and repentance at Nineveh teach us how the know- 
ledge of the Jews’ religion, and the fear of Jehovah, had spread 
abroad ; the Ninevites knew that the God of the Jews had threat- 
ened ; their humiliation was in the Hebrew form ; they did not 
sacrifice to their own idols, nor entreat their own divinities; the 
account of their season of confession is such as we might have had 
of Jerusalem or Jericho. 

Here we see, as in many other places in Scripture, not only that 
the prayer of a righteous man avail eth much, but that the kind- 
ness of God goes beyond his covenanted mercies, and accords those 
favors sought by the evil and impenitent. There is another im- 
portant point to be considered, namely, that the ruin of Nineveh 
was only delayed. The sinner by an external reform, and by prayer 
for favor, may avert temporal judgments, or delay his imminent 
doom, but only by repentance unto life can he secure his final sal- 
vation, or prevent the horror of that extreme hour when he shall 
feel that all indeed is lost. 

As God findeth no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but de- 


JONAH. 


391 


sires exceedingly that the sinner may turn from his iniquities and 
live, those his ministers who proclaim his truth should be, and 
indeed generally are, like minded, and experience the greatest 
satisfaction when men “ cry mightily unto God,” and “ turn every 
one from his evil way and from the violence that is in their 
hands.” 

Jonah was of a vastly different temper; his bitter spirit de- 
manded the destruction of these aliens from Jacob ; he gloated over 
the idea of the magnificent -ruin that might come as unto Sodom; 
he valued the fulfilment of his own word above the lives of so 
many thousands, and above the glory of God. His prayer is the 
most amazing on record ; probably never before had a man in set 
terms reproached his Creator for his most glorious attributes. 
Because he could not return to Zebulon covered with strange glory 
as the means of the fall of that proud capital, which defied kings, 
and which armies could not subdue, Jonah preferred and requested 
to die. The Lord knew that he was in a very poor frame of mind 
to leave this world, and was more merciful to him than his 
request. How calm the question to this turbulent, cruel, malicious, 
passion-tossed spirit : “ Doest thou well to be angry ? ” 

After this, Jonah fell into the most notable fit of sulks recorded in 
history. He went out of the east gate of the city, and seeking prob- 
ably some eminence where he could view the mighty panorama of 
life in Nineveh, he built a booth, and sat down with a lingering 
hope that the blow threatened might fall ; that his anger might 
outweigh the prayers of a repentant nation ; and that he should 
have the supreme satisfaction of seeing his prophecy accomplished. 

Never did man look on a sight more glorious than this which 
lay at the feet of Jonah— the imperial city of Assyria. Crowded 
palaces of enormous dimensions glowed in barbaric splendor, 
each seeming to rival its neighbor in sculptures and paintings 
jf most vivid dyes. In courts and temples stood groups of 


392 


JONAH. 


stone deities, where the eagle-headed Nisroch contended with the 
winged bull of Babylon and subdued it. There was the lofty 
temple of Nisroch, where afterwards Sennacherib was assassinated 
by his sons. Brick buildings were faced with alabaster ; pillars 
fluted and carved stood thick as forest trees ; carnelian, agate and 
marble of the finest polish united in the decorations of the houses ; 
the luxurious people delighted to array themselves in costly 
fabrics of the richest hues; the remains of painting and sculp- 
ture show that blue, purple, scarlet, and embroidery were used 
for clothing ; and that gold, silver and gems were lavishly dis- 
played. The streets looked like some gorgeous masquerade ; 
musicians with instruments inlaid with ebony and pearl gathered 
in the courts of the nobles ; the markets were crowded with traders 
of every nation, while bands of soldiers constantly went and came ; 
for these fierce Assyrians made their conquests by might and held 
them with a strong and cruel hand ; fear, not love, was the ruling 
motive of the day. 

He who framed the worlds, and fashioned each evanescent flower 
of grass ; who keeps the stars moving orderly in their mighty cir- 
cuits, and watches each little bird which having lived its tiny 
span drops lifeless to the earth, had glorious leisure still to teach 
his weakest servant a wonderful lesson. Jonah was such a crea- 
ture of the senses, such an obtuse spirit that only an object lesson 
could reach him, and that God gave him. 

While the prophet slept, a gourd with miraculous rapidity of 
growth burst the soil behind his booth, clambered over the frail 
structure, draped it with greenery, and when day broke, by its 
broad palmate leaves shut out the hot beams of a southern sun 
from the fainting prophet. Thus all through the hot tropic noon 
Jonah sat under the shadow of his wonderful tree with great de- 
light. Night fell with its sudden darkness, and its dews, which 
the prophet fondly trusted would increase the luxuriance of his 


JONAH. 


393 


gourd. But at the root of the fair vine lay a worm, which gnawed 
the stem, and fading as swiftly as it grew, in the morning, lo, 
only dry, dead stalks clung upon Jonah’s booth, and were twisted 
and swept away by a “ vehement east wind.” This hot wind 
parched the prophet’s veins ; his flesh felt scorched with the fervent 
heat ; the pitiless sun smote him; pain racked him. Below him 
in that hated city were cool retreats ; were deep shadows filled 
with the sweet sounds of falling fountains ; he had no shelter from 
wind and sun, no water to cool his lips ; he fainted in the fierce 
blasts of midday, crying out that he would rather die than live. 

“ Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd ? ” asked the Lord. 
And with matchless audacity Jonah retorted : “ I do well to be 
angry, even unto death.” 

Then the Lord took up his parable, a lesson to teach us patience 
and pity, and the value of human life and happiness. “ Thou 
hast had pity on the gourd for which thou hast not labored, 
neither madest it grow ; which came in a night and perished in a 
night. And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein 
are more than six score thousand persons which cannot discern 
between their right hand and their left hand; and also much 
cattle ? ” 

All revelation does not contain a more wonderful picture of 
God’s tender care, infinite consideration, and everlasting goodness 
to all that He has made. 

At this point the story leaves Jonah as suddenly as it introduced 
him. One tradition tells us that he returned home, and was buried 
where he was born, at Gath-hepher ; another account is that he 
died at Nineveh, and a mound called Nebi-Yunus, opposite the 
ruins of Mosul, is pointed out as his sepulchre. The words of 
our Saviour, and the phrase “ the word of the Lord which he spake 
by the hand of his servant Jonah,” tell us that this much-erring 
prophet was one of the children of the kingdom. The prophet’s 


394 


JONAH. 


prayer, in the second chapter of the book of Jonah, shows the deep 
repentance and humility of which he was capable ; perhaps after 
his lesson at Nineveh he brought forth better fruits. 

The story of the prophet may have given rise to the myth of 
Arion, who being cast by sailors into the sea, was at once received 
by a fish, who carried him to land, and he presented himself in 
the palace of the king ; though with the usual poetic additions of 
mythology Arion owes his escape to his music. As Spenser says : 

“ Arion with his harp unto him drew 
The ears and hearts of all that goodly crew ; 

Even when as yet the dolphin which him bore, 

Through the ^Egean seas from pirates’ view, 

Stood still by him, astonished at his lore, 

And all the raging seas for joy forgot to roar.” 


XIX. 


ISAIAH, 

THE HERALD OF THE MORNING. 


history of the world is the history of its religion. Re- 
;ion is the supreme power of society; it is also the 
jasure of its elevation or debasement. The chronicle of 
3 religious idea is the chronicle of men on the earth. 
As man’s soul is his chief part, the record of the development of 
his soul is the highest and most comprehensive history of the man. 
Jesus Christ is the grand centre of history ; in him all lines of re- 
ligious thought converge ; from him every form of benevolence, of 
wisdom, of good, radiates. From Paradise to Bethlehem ; from 
the sin of Eve to the maternity of Mary, the world toiled on- 
ward lighted in its gloomy night by the constellations and the 
daybeams, which were the heralds of the Sun of Righteousness. 

From Calvary until to-day, the Christian Church pursues her 
pilgrimage, expecting her rest and her refreshing only in the 
high noontide of our Lord’s return. 

When sudden night enshrouded the fortunes of the race ; when 
the lately brilliant destiny of the children of Adam was forfeited 
in an evil hour, a promise of a Deliverer was given, else human 
hearts could not have endured their weight of woe. This pro- 
mise was the common property of all the descendants of Adam ; 
however they defiled it by their debased imaginations, however 

they misapprehended or misapplied it, they all clung to it in one 

395 



396 


ISAIAH. 


poor fashion or another, and the Egyptian carved on his obelisk 
“ The Begotten of God ; the all-radiant One ; ” the Persian wrote 
of Ormuzd, the pure eternal light, and fountain of perfection ; and 
the poetic Greek cherished the story of Prometheus, half human, 
half divine, suffering for the sake of men. 

Christ, God in flesh, seed of woman, destroying the serpent and 
restoring the pristine happiness of man, was revealed to Adam. 
With lapsing years, Christ in his person, work and offices, was 
more and more clearly presented. Types of Him were an ascend- 
ing series ; becoming constantly more complete ; Adam, Enoch, 
Job, Abraham, Jacob, all the goodly galaxy of ancient worthies, 
as they strode on toward the hour of his appearing, saw brighter 
and brighter tokens of his rising. 

As man drifted farther and farther from the primitive know- 
ledge of the coming salvation, lost like Cain in the mists of his 
own theorizing ; as by indulgence in evil passions humanity be- 
came obtuse, it was necessary that the Lord of Life should be more 
and more revealed in type and shadow. The sensual heart needed 
sensible images to instruct it. 

It was not that the system changed. Christianity is not neces- 
sarily self-deyeloping ; from its inception it was like Minerva, full 
grown and equipped. It appears to be gradually developing, be- 
cause man has become so debased, his apprehension has been so 
dulled, that to give him as much light in one age as in another, 
that the knowledge of the third and fourth world-period should 
be equal to that of the first, types and prophecies of the Redeemer 
and his work, became more numerous and distinct. The revela- 
tion of the Infinite has mercifully kept pace with man’s advancing 
depravity. The soul grows on the same pabulum from age to 
age ; Enoch, Noah and Moses were as full-grown saints as Isaiah 
or any who came after him ; they had not had as minute or ex- 
plicit word-teaching, but less had gone a longer way in conveying 


ISAIAH. 


397 


knowledge to them. Our Lord in every age has been careful to 
supply all our need, and demand has been great, for, in spite of 
philosophers, since the fall man has been, when let alone by God, 
not an appreciating but a deteriorating animal. 

Different prophets exhibited different phases of the Messianic 
reign ; various types revealed various graces and offices of the 
Coming One. The Revelation of the Infinite was given to minds 
of diverse mould, and took their impress, just as light is colored 
by the medium through which it passes. Streaming through a 
rose window, the rays are blue, green, crimson, golden, according 
to the shade of the glass which transmits them, but the light 
itself holds all hues, and every exhibition of it is a legitimate part 
of the whole. 

One prophet, burning with the wrongs of his nation, sang of 
a coming Avenger, a strong arm of the Lord, a consuming fire 
to devour the offenders ; another, gentle and complaisant, tuned 
his harp to the name of Shelomoh the gracious, the pacific Prince ; 
a third, fired with patriotic ambition, foresaw the King, the 
Mighty Potentate in Zion, v T hose sceptre should sway all the 
earth ; yet another, weary and oppressed, beheld the Burden - 
bearer, the Saviour from self and sin, the Mediator before God, 
the Priest presenting the prayers of humanity in an acceptable 
hour. 

Again, we must remember that to some prophets was given a 
wider range of vision than to others. Daniel saw as far as John ; 
the revelation by the Hiddekel was of that man who on Patmos 
walked in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. The “ man 
greatly beloved,” and the “ disciple whom Jesus loved ” each 
beheld the final consummation of all things. 

Other prophets had no revelation beyond the first coming of 
our Lord. Some of the seers wrote both of the first and the 
second Advent of the Son of God ; and here the Jew became con- 


398 


ISAIAH. 


fused, and by reason of not setting himself to understand the 
word ; by accepting the easiest and most agreeable interpretation, 
the son of Israel ignored the fact of an earth life of sorrow, and a 
vicarious death for his Messiah, and chose rather to expect 
Him, who would come in the clouds of heaven in power and 
splendor. 

None among all the gifted seers of old read so clearly the 
character and work of his Lord, as Isaiah, the son of Amoz. 
His was one of the most sublime and noble minds which the 
Holy Spirit ever employed to pour forth His Voice unto a listen- 
ing world. His intellect was “ a lyre of widest range, struck by 
all passion.” Full of the glowing imagery of the Orient, he 
painted the most tremendous scenes of the world’s history, with a 
magnificence worthy of each theme. 

Israel and Egypt ; Tyre and Ethiopia ; Moab and Damascus ; 
Babylon and Syria; the golden isles of the Gentiles; the free- 
booters who dwelt in the desert ; Nineveh, with its astrologers ; 
all were exhibited in the pride of their glory, and were followed 
from the zenith of their splendor to the dark grave of forgetful- 
ness, whence the legend of their imperial power, stealing down to 
coming generations, should be but as a dream of a dream, “ the 
memory of a night vision.” 

Bearing thus God’s messages of doom to the nations, Isaiah had 
one joyous refrain running through every “ song of the sword ” — 
the coming of The Christ. “ Immanuel, God with us,” was the 
favorite burden of his speech. The Branch from the Root of 
Jesse; He who came “ glorious in his apparel,” the Redeemer of 
Zion ; " The God of Israel the Saviour,” — this was the darling 
thought of the ecstatic seer. 

In the outpourings of his prophecy, he preached a full gospel ; 
precious beyond speech are his delineations of the fatherly good- 
ness of God, and the redemptive work of the Divine Son of Man. 


ISAIAH. 


399 


The prophet had seen the Lord of Hosts, and his lips had been 
touched by a live coal from the altar, so that he was enabled to 
behold and declare those golden millennial ages, which, like the 
freeness, fulness and simplicity of salvation, are felt by many too 
good to be believed. 

The materials of which we can reconstruct the personal history 
of Isaiah are few indeed. His lineage and birthplace are not pre- 
served to us, but the probability is that he was of the house of 
Judah. It is enough that he was born endowed for a transcen- 
dant mission; that he belonged to the race of holy prophets, and 
whether he had his paternity in Levi, Judah or Ephraim ; whether 
his infancy was cradled in Benjamin or Zebulon, he was the 
“ chosen vessel ” to bear the grace of the everlasting Father to the 
weary and groping sons of men ; he was the artist whose brush 
was dipped in celestial light and color, that he might limn for 
humanity the Christ, 

“ Strong Son of God, Immortal Love.” 

Isaiah entered upon his prophetic office in the reign of Uzziah. 

As he continued his prophecies until nearly, or quite the close of 
Hezekiah’s reign, he must have first appeared in a public capa- * 

city at an early age, and during Uzziah’s closing years. 

The vision of Jehovah Jesus, enthroned in the earthly tabernacle 
and served by seraphim, occurred in the year of Uzziah’s death. 

During the sixteen years of the reign of Jotham, there seems to 
have been no public prophecyings by Isaiah. 

The seer dwelt in retirement, sorrow devouring his heart, be- 
cause of the sins of his nation and the judgments which were 
hastening upon them. He had cried of woe to the people, and 
the woe was to him a continual presence, a “ Priestess in the vaults 
of death.” But his sorrow was not hopeless; he cherished a 
sweet assurance of the blissful dawn ; a resurrection from this 
grave of the nation’s holiness and happiness. 


400 


ISAIAH. 


Nor was the seer left alone to his griefs and his hopes ; in his 
own household God sent him companionship. 

Isaiah’s wife was one of that splendid succession of women, 
who, from Eve to Mary, graced the line of God’s chosen people. 
Like Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, and Huldah, she was a prophetess. 

God gave his servant, who must bear the burden of life, pro- 
claiming the burdens of the chief nations of idolaters, and who 
must, with anguished eyes, view the coming desolation of his 
kindred and nation, a companion soul, lofty as his own, to help 
him heavenward. The two were married hearts and intellects, 
and stood with the “ children God had given ” them, as signs 
before the world. 

In the reign of Jotham, this prophetic pair were given a son, 
whom they named Shear-jashub — a remnant shall return; the 
name was the low moan of their sorrow, and whispered a sugges- 
tion of their solace. 

The remarkable prosperity which attended the fifty-two years 
of Uzziah’s reign, had continued through the sixteen years when 
Jotham occupied the throne. These two kings, ruling in the 
fear of the Lord, secured the present felicity of their dominions. 

Of Uzziah, we are told that “ he did that which was right in 
the sight of the Lord.” One great sin he committed, his sacrilege 
in the Temple, and for that he was sorely punished in his leprosy. 

Jotham also “was mighty, because he prepared his ways before 
the Lord his God.” 

Jotham was followed by the weak and wicked Ahaz. This 
king turned aside from the path of his fathers, and “ made images 
to Baalim.” 

Early in his reign, Israel became confederate with Syria, and 
the combined forces marched against Jerusalem. At the com- 
mand of the Lord, Isaiah, taking with him the child of mystical 
promise — Shear-jashub — went to Ahaz. 


ISAIAH. 


401 


The prophet and his boy met the armies of Judah where the 
Lord had especially ordained the conference — “ at the conduit of 
the upper pool, in the highway of the fuller’s field.” 

This place was southwest of Jerusalem, in the Valley of Gihon. 
Here Solomon had been anointed king; by the pool there was a 
living fountain — type of the everflowing mercy of God toward 
Jacob. Where Solomon had received the crown in peace, his 
descendant, in the eleventh generation, heard a cheering message 
from the King of kings: “Take heed and be quiet; fear not, 
neither be faint-hearted.” 

For some time after this, Isaiah was as one engaged in a deadly 
hand to hand combat. The wicked king, trusting in man and 
forgetting God, was resolved to make an alliance with Assyria. 
He became’ tributary to Tiglath-Pileser ; stripped the Temple of 
its treasures to send him presents, and even visited him in con- 
quered Damascus as his vassal. 

More than this, he sought help from false gods. He wor- 
shipped Molech, and offered his own children to the monster 
deity ; he consulted wizards ; sacrificed to the Syrian pantheon ; 
brought an altar from Damascus for new worship in Judah; and 
erected on his housetop altars to the heavenly hosts. 

By word and by sign, Isaiah sought to awaken the remorse and 
terror of his apostate nation ; to drive them from their idolatries, 
and to prevent alliances with enemies of Jehovah. The king and 
court clung to the treaty with Tiglath-Pileser ; but many of the 
people were inclined to unite with humbled Damascus, to throw 
off the Assyrian yoke. 

“ Fear none but Jehovah,” cried Isaiah ; but cried in vain. 
“ God was not in all their thoughts.” 

“Ask,” said the agonized prophet to the besotted Ahaz, “a 
sign of the Lord thy God : ask it either in the depth, or in the 

height above.” 

26 


402 


ISAIAH. 


“ I will not ask,” replied Ahaz ; “ neither will I tempt the 
Lord.” 

“ Hear now ! ” exclaimed Isaiah, stretching forth his arms to 
Heaven. “ Is it a small thing to you to weary men, but will ye 
weary my God also ? Therefore the Lord himself shall give you 
a sign. Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and call 
his name Immanuel.” 

This was a sign far off ; there was another for the present. 
The prophetess bore a son, and her husband called him, as his 
brother, by a mystic name. 

Before court and people they brought the babe for a sign. 
Uriah and Zechariah were faithful witnesses, chosen to make 
record of the prophecy. The young infant smiled, sleeping in its 
mother’s arms ; “ Lo,” said the prophet, pointing to the little one, 
“ before this child shall have knowledge to cry my father and my 
mother, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria shall be 
taken away before the king of Assyria.” 

Such warnings fell on heedless ears. Ahaz was given over to 
strong delusion ; he could believe in the oracles of the heathen, 
but not in the words of one who was the voice of the Living God. 
The people partook of the gross unbelief of their sovereign. 
Isaiah had written the name borne by his infant son upon a 
“great roll,” and set it up before the nation in a public place. 
As they went to and fro on business or pleasure, the ominous word 
“ Speedspoil,” stared them in the face. 

To Isaiah and his faithful witnesses, it meant the direful hour 
when Zion should be trampled under foot by the heathen. To 
the majority of beholders it "was nothing but a madman’s babble. 

The words of the prophet were heeded by some few chosen 
souls throughout the kingdom ; the remnant, salt of grace, whose 
children’s children, far away, should be the returning families to 
plant anew the nation of Judah. 


ISAIAII. 


403 


We can picture to ourselves the seer, “ rapt Isaiah,” in his 
home, pouring forth his visions, while, with awed faces, his faith- 
ful scribes and witnesses record the words, trembling with the 
weighty import of the prophecy. 

No other poet ever uttered so magnificent an ode as that in the 
fourteenth chapter of Isaiah. Babylon, the queen of nations, on 
the Chaldean plain, shook back her golden locks, and, wrapped 
in purple, smiled supreme at suppliant nations crowding to her 
feet — queen of a world. That obscure man of J udah, who should 
be a household word when Babylon’s very ruins had been swept 
away like chaff from a summer threshing-floor, stood on the 
crumbling walls of Zion, looked toward the regnant city, and 
spoke of her glory as already a thing which had passed away. 
Higher .and higher rise the notes of his jubilant song. They were 
lent him from heaven, and like the smoke of the incense, and the 
prayers of the people, they speed to their celestial home. “ All the 
kings of the nations lie in glory, even every one of them in his 
own house. But thou art cast out of thy grave.” “ Hell from 
beneath is moved to meet thee at thy coming.” 

Since this was sung, all the rhetoricians of the ages, all the 
aesthetic critics whom literature has nursed, have come to learn at 
the feet of the son of Amoz. 

After sixteen years of profligacy and of disaster, Ahaz died, and 
as he drew his last breath, the nation broke into a jubilee. They 
were free from their chief curse — a godless king. 

They refused him burial in the sepulchres of his fathers, and 
placed upon his throne Hezekiah his son, a man who was in all 
things unlike his parent; one in whom the goodly type of David 
returned. His mother was Abi, daughter of Zachariah, probably 
that Zachariah whom Isaiah chose as his friend and “ faithful 
witness.” Hezekiah entered upon a long and happy reign of 
twenty-nine years. He was one of the three most excellent kings 


404 


ISAIAH. 


of Judah, the chief of that royal trio, for says Scripture, “ After 
him there was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor 
any that were before him.” 

The reign of Hezekiah began with the opening and repairing 
of the Lord’s House. His proclamation to the people and the 
Levites is marked with the godly simplicity of his character ; and 
we can imagine what hearty response it awoke in the bosom of 
Isaiah. He had now a monarch who would honor his office and 
heed his counsels. Ahaz, the unbeliever, had been bitterness to 
his spirit ; Hezekiah would become his consolation. 

Elijah had felt himself alone upon the earth. “ I only am 
left,” had been his plaint; Isaiah had a happier lot, in that 
he heard about him the clarion voices of brothers, who, like him- 
self, bore messages from the Eternal. 

His cotemporaries among the prophets were Joel and Micah in 
Judah, Hosea and Amos in Israel. The life of Hosea seems to 
have covered about the same period as that of Isaiah — the 
reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah. Micah prophesied 
during the reigns of the last three; and as the voices of these 
great witnesses reverberated among hills and valleys, each seer 
strengthened his brother’s faith. 

King Hezekiah leaned upon Isaiah as his counsellor and friend ; 
he regarded him as the chief bulwark of the kingdom ; when war 
from Assyria burst upon Judah, when the resistless hosts of 
Sennacherib, with cruel taunts and lofty boasts, summoned Jerusa- 
lem to surrender, before calling out his armies, Hezekiah sent his 
lord chamberlain, the chief of the priests, and Shebna, most honor- 
able of scribes, robed in sackcloth, to Isaiah, to ask his prayers 
4|md counsels. 

Hezekiah had gone to the right place for comfort. “ Be not 
afraid,” said Isaiah to the weeping monarch. “ Behold, I will send 
a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumor and return to his 


ISAIAH. 


405 


own land, and I will cause him fall by the sword in his own 
land.” 

The almost countless host of Rabshakeh lay before Zion spread 
like swarms of locusts over the fertile plains, and upon the sunny 
olive-clad slopes ; Sennacherib himself had been for a long time be- 
sieging Pelusium, but according to the prophecy of Isaiah, he 
“ heard a rumor.” This rumor was that Tirhakah, King of Ethi- 
opia, was coming to make war on 1 him. The mighty Assyrian 
saw that he must join forces with his most powerful general, and 
hastened to unite with Rabshakeh. While the king was drawing 
near to his general, the angel of the Lord, who smote the first- 
born of Egypt, and whom David saw standing above the thresh- 
ing-floor of Oman, passed, clothed in terrors, through the camp 
which besieged the holy city. On the very first night of the 
siege, a hundred and eighty-five thousand of the Assyrian soldiers, 
with their captains and generals, were smitten in a single hour. 

In the morning, when Sennacherib effected a junction with his 
lieutenant, he found all the host in confusion and dismay ; the 
dead were more than the living, and in an agony of dread the 
Assyrians began a rapid and disorganized retreat. The last clause 
of the prophecy remained to be accomplished. Sennacherib, having 
returned to Nineveh, entered the house of his favorite god to 
worship, and there, before the eyes of his idol, his two sons assassi- 
nated him. 

Though given later in the narrative, chronology makes it proba- 
ble that the sore illness, and miraculous recovery of Hezekiah, 
were a year prior to the invasion of Rabshakeh. 

By Isaiah was sent to Hezekiah the prophecy of his approach- 
ing death. At that time there was no heir to the throne, and the 
affairs of the kingdom were in a troubled condition. The tears 
and prayers of the righteous king procured for him a lengthening 
of his days, which grace was announced by Isaiah, who doubtless 


406 


ISAIAH. 


came with alacrity upon so joypus an errand. The king lay in a 
chamber opening upon the court of the palace — a paradise of 
beauty. Here the fig tree and the pomegranate were burdened 
with their luscious fruits; flowers of splendid dyes were refreshed 
by the waters of a cool fountain, which flowed in grateful music 
through all the tropic day. 

In the midst of the court was “ the sun-dial of Ahaz,” a trophy 
of his intercourse with the astronomical Assyrians. It is a pity 
that all fruit of that intimacy had not been so innocent and so 
useful. 

“ This shall be a sign unto thee from the Lord, that the Lord 
will do as he hath spoken ; behold I will bring again the shadow 
of the degrees, which is gone down in the sun-dial of Ahaz, ten 
degrees backward/’ said the prophet. 

The languid gaze of the king fixed on his father’s favorite dial- 
plate. Would the winged hours which he had spent in prayer 
and tears return ? 

The shadow, which had crept over the dial-plate, slid slowly 
back. The flowers, which had drooped for the coming of the 
twilight, w r ere conscious of a hotter noon ; never had the people 
of Jerusalem known the time so long from rising to sun-setting : 
it was a day which left its trace upon history, like its mate, the 
day when Joshua commanded sun and moon to stand still. The 
priests of Heliopolis, the astrologers on the tower of Belus, the 
star-gazers of Nineveh, on the top of the house of Nisroch, looked 
to the heavens and to each other in amaze; the reason none could 
understand, none but one — the seer of Judah ; he knew it was a 
sign from the Lord his God. 

David wrote, “ Before I was afflicted I went astray ; ” Hezekiah 
went astray after he was afflicted. Merodach Baladan, king of 
Babylon, heard of Hezekiah’s illness ; but what proved of more 
interest to him was the astronomical wonder connected with it. 


ISAIAH. 


407 


It had become known that the miraculous lengthening of that 
mysterious day had been ordained at Jerusalem as a sign from the 
Lord of Hosts. 

To gratify the curiosity of the learned men of his kingdom was 
one object of the gorgeous embassy now sent from Chaldea to the 
City of David. The king, however, had another object in view. 
Sargon, king of Assyria, was very powerful, and threatened to 
absorb all monarchies in his own, and Merodach Baladan desired 
to become confederate with Judah and Egypt to resist his rival of 
Nineveh. 

Elated by the honor of an embassy travelling in such splendid 
state, and with the offer of friendship from the king of mighty 
Babylon, Hezekiah was eager to conclude a treaty. To impress 
his guests with his own greatness he displayed to them the temple, 
palaces and fortifications of Jerusalem ; and all the treasure which 
the goodness of God had permitted him to accumulate. 

The guests soon departed for Egypt, and when they were gone, 
Isaiah came to the king, asking with a severe countenance what 
had been shown them. The exhibition of wealth had been vain- 
glorious, not comporting with Christian humility ; but it had been 
more than this. Hezekiah, the viceroy of Heaven, had put him- 
self on a par with idolaters, appearing to them as one who trusted 
in armies, silver and gold. Besides this, he had stooped to feel 
honored by an alliance with a heathen power, as if he, the Theo- 
cratic king, were inferior to the worshipper of Belus ; and, more- 
over, the law forbidding confederation with the enemies of Jehovah 
had never been annulled, and such a coalition was in itself a 
treason against the fundamental principles of the Jewish govern- 
ment. 

To Isaiah’s questioning, Hezekiah made honest answers worthy 
of himself. The judgment that was pronounced upon him seems, 
at first sight, heavy, but we must consider the circumstances and 


408 


ISAIAH. 


aggravations of the offence, and moreover that this sin was merely 
one of a long series committed by the kings of Judah, each of 
which had been heaping up judgments; and that the people had 
run greedily in the evil ways of their masters, and incurred in 
their own proper persons the vengeance of Heaven. 

This embassy from Merodach Baladan appears to have been in 
713 before Christ. The same year Sargon, aware of the Baby- 
lonian attempts to make common cause with Egypt and Judah, 
sent a host under his son Sennacherib to besiege Pelusium, the 
strength of Egypt, while Rabshakeh advanced against Jerusalem. 
As these armies moved southwest, the tireless Sargon himself 
made haste to attack Babylon. He overcame Merodach Baladan, 
who fled to a foreign island, having reigned twelve years. Sargon 
himself died almost immediately, and Sennacherib occupied at 
Pelusium found himself king of Nineveh. Then came the rumor 
of Tirhakah’s federation with Egypt, the union with the dismayed 
hosts of Rabshakeh, and the hasty return to Nineveh. Some 
years after, Sennacherib was assassinated, as has been said, by 
fiis sons. 

Merodach Baladan, in whose proffered friendship Hezekiah 
vainly exulted, remained in his exile for some time; anarchy 
ruled at Babylon, and at last Merodach returned and threw off 
the Ninevite yoke. His second reign lasted but six months ; being 
again dethroned, he took refuge in a strange land, passing out of 
the memory of his countrymen, and dying in loneliness and exile. 

From the prophecy after the illness of Hezekiah, Isaiah seems 
more and more occupied with visions of the kingdom and coming 
/ of his Lord Christ. 

Once he turns aside from the Messianic prophecy to cry out 
against Bel and Nebo, but even that strain ends in a promise : 
“ My salvation shall not tarry ; and I will place salvation in 
Zion for Israel my glory.” 


ISAIAH. 


409 


Once also he calls to the daughter of the Chaldeans : “ Come 
down and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon,” and 
utters the curse reserved for the “ Lady of kingdoms.” 

But Christ, the God and man, redeemed Jerusalem, the re- 
stored city ; the fulness of the Gentiles, the ransomed of the Lord, 
singing themselves along the road as they return to Zion with 
everlasting joy ; Jesus the smitten and wounded One, satisfied with 
his soul’s travail, and dividing the portion with the great, and 
rescuing the spoil of the strong; these are the jubilant themes 
which hold the soul of the aged prophet transported with joy. 
Age has not quenched his enthusiasm, nor untuned the flowing 
numbers of that heavenly oracle. Never sung soothsayer so sweetly 
where 

“ Nightly trance or breathed spell 
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.” 

John, the latest seer, saw no more glowing image of the New 
Jerusalem than dawned upon the fading eyes of Isaiah, when he 
cried : “ I will lay thy stones with fair colors, and lay thy founda- 
tions with sapphires ; and I will make thy windows agates, and 
thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones.” 

When unbelievers mocked and foes derided, the prophet pro- 
tested : “ For Zion’s sake I will not hold my peace, and for 
Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest.” His soul labored forever in 
the fire for the sake of his people, but the hour of his resting drew 
nigh. The Lord giveth his beloved sleep. At the accession of 
Manasseh, Isaiah must have been about ninety years old. When 
that son of Belial entered on his reign, the noblest of his subjects 
was called “ where the wicked cease from troubling and the 
weary are at rest.” 

The nearer the grand old prophet approached the end of his 
earthly pilgrimage, the deeper insight did he gain of heavenly 
mysteries. The unalterable decrees and transcendent power of 


410 


ISAIAH. 


God shone upon him in their glory ; the benison of peace was 
on his hoar head, and lie, called to his people that the Lord would 
extend to them “ peace like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles 
like a flowing stream.” He foresaw the painful journey of the 
Church through a desert world, and sent a lay of cheer : “ As 
one whom his mother comforteth so will I comfort you.” And 
the reason of the Church’s comfort the prophet holds to be the 
coming of her Lord in judgment. A perverted idea has been 
impressed upon Christians, as if they must fear and dread the 
coming of Christ ; must wail of the “ dreadfulyday,” and of the 
“ hour of terror.” This was not Paul’s view; he was looking for 
and hastening unto the coming of his Lord, as the bride- longs for 
her bridegroom. 

Beyond the judgment, Isaiah beheld that fairest vision, the new 
heavens and the new earth, where from moon to moon, from Sab- 
bath to Sabbath, all men shall worship in the joy of the Lord. 
Warning transgressors to the very last, Isaiah sends after them a 
shout of the doom that must overtake them, wherein the righteous 
shall of necessity justify God. Thus, threatening and imploring 
sinners, Isaiah laid down the burden of his mortal life, and went 
into the presence chamber, to behold the “ King in his beauty, in 
the land that is very far off.” 

Had he perished in his youth’s glowing morning, he would have 
been set chief of sweet singers by the soft symphonies of his lyric 
of the vine : “ Now will I sing to my beloved, a song of my be- 
loved touching his vineyard ; my well-beloved had a vineyard in a 
very fruitful hill.” 

Added years only added to his glory and to his usefulness. His 
mission grew in greatness with the growing decades of his life ; 
his book, while it cannot fail to be a glorious monument of the 
author’s genius, yet. hides the prophet and the man, in the rare 
fulness and perfection of its matchless delineation of Jesus our Lord. 


XX. 


JEREMIAH. 

GLORIFYING GOD IN THE FIRE. 


BOUT the year 640 before Christ, during the reign of 
Manasseh, a child was born to Hilkiah, the Priest, in 
Anathoth, who was destined to hold an immortal place in # 

the history, not only of the Jewish Church, but of the 
Church universal. 

Anathoth was a village in the portion of Benjamin ; it belonged 
to the reservation of the Levites, and was about three miles from 
Jerusalem. 

The Israelites dedicated to their Lord, and to the use of his 
servants, no starveling portion, but the best of their possessions. 
Anathoth was an important and beautiful town. 

Its priestly owners enriched it by their labor and wealth. 

The fortifications of the place were strong and extensive to this 
day, its quarries supply Jerusalem with stone; and the memory 
of the sons of Levi lives yet in grain fields, vineyards, and olive 
orchards, which once were cultivated by their hands. 

Hither Abiathar, the priest who joined the conspiracy of Adoni- 
jah, was banished by Solomon to his own “ fields.” Here 
Abiezer, one of David’s captains, and Jehu, one of his mighty 
men, were born ; here, long after Jeremiah’s death, the men of 
Anathoth returned, under Zerubbabel, to build up their waste 
places. 



411 


412 


JEREMIAH. 


It has been thought by some, that Hilkiah, the father of Jere- 
miah, was that high priest who zealously aided J osiah in his work 
of reformation. 

From his birth, Jeremiah was chosen of the Lord ; even before 
his birth, God tells him that he was called and sanctified. 

The boy grew up in Anathoth among the priests ; living so 
near Zion, he heard continually of the abominations of Manasseh, 
that hoary old sinner, whose long reign was dedicated not to god- 
liness, but to idolatry. 

Amon, succeeding his father, and bearing his sins with his 
sceptre, reigned but two years. 

The boy of the Levites, perhaps, went up to the city of David, 
to see the crown placed on the brow of that other boy, the child 
of Judah, eight years old when he entered upon his inheritance. 

There was now a sudden end to the abominations and cruelties 
practised by the minions of idolatrous kings. Peace came to the 
weary nation ; glad lips told of the piety of that young monarch, 
who, unallured by power and flattery, had turned his face to seek 
the Lord his God. 

Meanwhile Jeremiah, remaining at his early home, pursued 
those studies natural to his position, and congenial to his sanctified 
spirit. By his parents and teachers, he was carefully trained in 
the ordinances and traditional precepts of the Law ; the precious 
books of Moses, and the sacred songs of David, the records of the 
earthly kingdom, and the ecstatic visions of elder seers, of the 
Divine Ruler and his heavenly realm, were day and night the 
study of the youth, who revolved high themes beyond the ken of 
his teachers. 

Doubtless, he questioned much of old men who had seen Isaiah, 
concerning the looks, acts and words of that notable prophet, 
whose mantle had fallen upon himself. 

His eager spirit also turned toward the gifted wife of Shallum, 


JEREMIAH. 


413 


who, dwelling in Jerusalem, was the oracle of God to men; and 
in the midst of that grand renaissance of JosiahV reign, was thus 
far alone in speaking the Supreme Will by direct inspiration. 

Living so near Zion, going, as was his joy and duty, so often 
to the Temple, it would not be wonderful if the youthful Levite 
lingered often in a the college,” at the home of Shallum, to seek 
counsel and instruction from Huldah, to whom a king was not . 
ashamed to appeal in his extremity. 

In the twelfth year of Josiah, the purifying of Judah and Jeru- 
salem began. At the age of twenty, Josiah, full of fervent zeal, 
a royal iconoclast, headed the bands of those who “ broke down 
the altars of Baalim, and the images that were high above them.” 

With kindling eyes, he watched his servants cut down “ groves, 
carved images, and molten images.” 

It was a grand day ; it had been foretold before the smoking 
altar of Jeroboam, and now Josiah, the son of prophecy, cleansed 
Judah and Israel of all their idols. 

The year after this exhibition of righteous zeal, Jeremiah 
received his call to the public office of a prophet. 

The wrongs heaped up by two base kings ; the religious enthu-, 
siasm of Josiah; the devout spirit of Huldah; the friendship 
with the pious family of Neriah ; the Levitical training, and a 
childhood and youth of spiritual contemplation and profound 
study, had nourished in Jeremiah all the traits of a religious, 
fervid, wrapt ascetic. Conscious with an intense humility of his 
own weakness ; wearing his body as a clog and burden to his 
struggling soul ; sensitive to every look and every word ; keenly 
susceptible to all emotions of joy and pain, but finding much 
more pain than joy in a world framed for ruder spirits, Jeremiah 
entered upon a life-long martyrdom when he was called to a 
public place. 

Left to himself, remaining unknown and unnoticed in “Ana- 


414 


JEREMIAH. 


thotli,” the man might have done some unobtrusive reforming 
work, might have shone in the mild radiance of a good example, 
and have gone down to his grave in peace. But an irresistible 
Voice called him to come from seclusion, and stand before kings. 

The thoughts and feelings of a holy man, which he would have 
cherished as secret treasure in his own bosom, must be dragged 
forth as weapons, and used against priests, kings and people. 

“ I have ordained thee a prophet to all nations,” said the Voice 
of the Potent Ruler. 

The announcement filled the shrinking listener with strange 
pain. “Ah, Lord,” he mourned, “ I cannot speak, I am a child.” 

“ Be not afraid of their faces, for I am with thee to deliver 
thee,” replied the Lord. 

From that hour calm and pleasure lay behind the prophet. 
Green were the fields of Anathoth, purple hung the clusters of the 
vine, golden grew the olives in the sun ; but while other youths 
might gather fruit and bear home the harvests, he must go out 
into that world, whose wrath and lust, whose hate and scorn and 
hardness of heart, were like scorching furnace fires, blasting the 
joyous springtime of that young prophetic soul. 

Five years passed, and the gentle prophet, speaking as he was 
bidden by the Lord, had not yet been fully recognized by king or 
nation. The memorable eighteenth year of Josiah came, and when 
the Book of the Law was found hidden in an obscure and neglected 
corner; when the dust was brushed from the parchment, and the 
words of the mighty God flashed forth red fires like long-hidden 
rubies, the alarmed king, seeing how much had been required, 
and how little had been performed, sent his committee of five 
eminent priests and officers, not to Jeremiah, but to Huldah, to 
ask the mind of the Lord. 

The book, the reply of the prophetess, and the public reading 
of the re-discovered statutes of the law, could not have been unno- 
ticed by Jeremiah. 


JEREMIAH. 


415 


Such themes as these had fed his soul from infancy ; every 
word of his God was precious ; studying the book of the law, lie 
learned a terrible truth. This recent reformatory work in the 
nation was surface work ; it was external. 

The hearty godliness of the king, and some of the people, had 
made piety popular; it was an honorable thing now to be a 
devout Jew, and thousands who^had cried, “ Great is Baal,” and 
would cry it again on occasion, were shouting, “ The Lord he is 
God ! ” 

The case of Judah in Josiah’s day finds its parallel in the nine- 
teenth century. We are fallen upon times when piety is the 
proper thing ; when a certificate of church membership has a flavor 
of respectability about it, like a family pedigree. If storms of 
trouble should arise, if persecution should light its fires, our 
churches would be reduced by very many. The reduction in num- 
bers might be an addition to their vital strength; those that would 
be left would at least be whole-hearted. 

Pursuing his office as a priest and his work as a prophet, Jere- 
miah was more and more impressed with the consciousness that 
the* religious life of his nation was rotten at the core. Strange 
visions sent to him from Heaven, convinced him that the judg- 
ments ordained would hasten, and his voice of prophetic woe rang 
out like a dirge over the careless nation. While Josiah was his 
friend, he who could warn and upbraid so incessantly had bitter 
enemies. The hostility of which he was the object was anguish 
to his tender spirit. He dared not refrain from speaking the 
Voice of the Lord, which was as a “ fire in his bones,” but when 
he spoke the multitude gnashed upon him, and would have done 
him violence. He cries, out of his tribulations, “ Woe is me, my 
mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and of contention 
to the whole earth ! I have neither lent on usury, nor men have 
lent to me on usury, yet every one of them doth curse me.” 


416 


JEREMIAH. 


While threatening, Jeremiah also entreated ; he held forth the 
righteousness of Christ; he pleaded for God with a rebellious 
generation. Heart-sick and lonely, we hear him plaining in the 
night watches — “O hope of Israel! the Saviour thereof in time 
of trouble, why shouldest thou be as a stranger in the land, and 
as a wayfaring man that turneth aside to tarry for a night ! ” 

False prophets swarmed through the land; Huldah was dead ; 
during Isaiah’s lifetime the kingdom of Israel had been swept 
away by the floodtide of Assyrian wrath ; there were no brother 
prophets to echo Jeremiah’s voice, he was like the lonely bittern 
sounding her cry through the desolate land. 

Now came another trouble ; the good Josiah fell in battle. The 
king had, probably by the advice of Jeremiah, attached himself 
to the new Chaldean kingdom ; and in an attack on the king of 
Egypt, in behalf of his new allies, the gracious and godly sove- 
reign lost his life. Here the prophet might indeed feel deserted, 
and ask if the loving-kindness of the Lord were gone forever. 
“ Thy words were found, and I did eat them,” he says, probably, 
of the book of the law found in the Temple ; “ I sat not in the 
assembly of the mockers, nor rejoiced ; I sat alone because of thy 
hand,” he pleads. u Why is my pain perpetual ? ” he queries ; 
“ wilt thou be to me as waters that fail ? ” 

Then, into the pitiful gloom wherein he sat, stole the Voice of 
consolation : “ I am with thee to deliver thee,” saith the Lord. 

The prophet was doomed to dwell alone ; the Lord said to him, 
“ Thou shalt not take thee a wife, neither shalt thou have sons or 
daughters in this place.” But there was mercy folded up in the 
decree, for the Lord added, “ concerning the sons and the daugh- 
ters that are born in this place they shall die grievous deaths, and 
shall not be lamented.” 

To Josiah succeeded Shallum, whose short reign lasted but three 
months ; he was deposed by Pharaoh Necho, and this shows that 


JEREMIAH. 


417 


he pursued the line of policy favored by Jeremiah, which was 
anti-Egyptian: Jeremiah speaks very touchingly of the captive 
king: “Weep not for the dead, neither bemoan him, but weep 
sore for him that goeth away ; for he shall return no more, nor 
see his native country. He shall die in the place where they have 
carried him captive, and shall see this land no more.” 

Already Jeremiah was enduring persecutions ; one of the chief 
priests was Pashur, the son of Immer ; he was so enraged at the 
prophecy of the coming desolation of Jerusalem that he “smote 
Jeremiah and put him in the stocks.” He seems to have been a 
life-long enemy of the man of God, for we find him petitioning 
the king to put Jeremiah to death. 

After Shallum, reigned Jehoiakim for eleven years; he was an 
ally of Egypt, an enemy of Jeremiah. In this reign rose up 
Urijah the prophet, with words of warning ; the king endeavored 
to kill him, but he fled into Egypt. There the royal hate pursued 
him ; he was captured, and brought back to Jerusalem, where, by 
order of the monarch, he was killed with a sword, and refused 
honorable burial. Jeremiah would have shared the same fate for 
similar offences. At the end of a public prophecy the mob seized 
him, saying, “Thou shalt surely die.” The priests and false 
prophets joined in the outcry, and appealed to the princes for his 
condemnation. Jeremiah, brought before the court, boldly re- 
peated his words, and declared that they would prove true. He 
bade his judges amend their ways or they should perish ; and 
added, that, as he was helpless in their hands, they would do as 
they chose witli him ; but that, if they put him to death, God 
would avenge his blood. 

By the powerful influence of his old friend Ahikam, Jeremiah 
escaped ; the friendship of this prince was one of the few allevia- 
tions of his unhappy lot in life. 

At this time the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, had con- 
27 


418 


JEREMIAH. 


quered Pharaoh Necho, and had made Palestine tributary to 
Chaldea ; he came up against the city Jerusalem and captured 
it after a short siege. Here occurred the interesting episode 
of the Rechabites, who, having with other inhabitants of the open 
country, taken refuge in the royal city, were made use of as a sign 
by the prophet. 

Baruch, the son of Neriah, was the scribe and chosen friend of 
Jeremiah. When Jeremiah was unable to go to the Temple to 
read the roll of his prophecies in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, 
Baruch fearlessly took his place ; the king hearing of the threaten- 
ing deliverances, would have killed both seer and scribe, but 
warned by their few friends in power, they fled, and the sovereign 
solaced his wrath by cutting up the parchment in a childish rage, 
and throwing it in the fire. 

Nebuchadnezzar carried from Jerusalem many of the vessels and 
ornaments of the Temple, and numerous notable captives, of whom 
were Daniel and his three friends. The restive conduct of the 
Jewish king, who vainly hoped to throw off the Chaldean yoke, 
brought on him the armies of Babylon; siege, pestilence, famine, 
were upon the doomed city with all their horrors. The king and 
the chief treasures of Zion were carried off by Nebuchadnezzar, 
and Jehoiachin enjoyed a three months’ royalty. Zedekiah then 
was placed on the throne by the Babylonian despot. 

Zedekiah seemed, at first, willing to be guided by the prophet; 
he sent for him to come and counsel him, and asked the aid of his 
prayers : wicked men are often more willing to be prayed for, 
than to pray. 

Set up in the kingdom by the power of the oppressors of the 
land, Zedekiah was but a poor shadow of royalty. He hated the 
Chaldeans, his masters ; he desired the aid of Egypt/and was en- 
raged that it was so feeble or so long withheld ; he feared his own 
princes and counsellors, was false to the God who would have been 
his help and his shield. 


JEREMIAH. 


419 


A powerful host having come out of Egypt, the Chaldeans at 
Jerusalem were too prudent to risk a battle, and withdrew; Jere- 
miah warned the Jews that the departure would be for but a short 
period. “ The Chaldeans shall come again, and fight against this 
city, and burn it with fire.” 

So great was the popular indignation at this announcement, that 
Jeremiah resolved to fly from the noisy city, and take refuge for 
a season in the fair inheritance of Anathoth, where his kindred 
dwelt. 

He naturally left Jerusalem at the gate of Benjamin, but there 
Irijah, captain of the ward in charge of the gate and defences on 
that part of the city, recognized him, and putting his quiet depar- 
ture with his well-known advocacy of submission to the Babylo- 
nians, charged him thus : “ Thou fallest away to the Chaldeans.” 
“ It is false,” replied Jeremiah, “I fall not away to the Chal- 
deans.” 

The pretext for imprisoning an unpopular man was too precious 
to be let slip ; the prophet was at once confronted with the angry 
princes. 

They had made the house of Jonathan the scribe a prison for 
political offenders, and there Jeremiah was to be in close duress; 
but, more than this, they gratified their hatred by smiting him, 
and putting him in the vilest and most painful wards; “in the 
dungeons and the cabins for many days.” 

The strong hand of God prevented them from killing him ; and 
against their cruel wish the man — immortal until his work was 
done — survived his dungeon discipline. We pause to consider 
that no persecutions, no deprivations, no sore bereavements, when 
it seemed to human vision that God might have helped him and 
would not, ever made Jeremiah flinch one hair’s breadth from the 
path of duty. The prophet was fashioned of the stuff that mar- 
tyrs are made of; he belonged to the goodly army, which from 


420 


JEREMIAH. 


the smoking altar of Abel, unto the altar of God in heaven, have 
marched through this world, a glorious host ; who have loved not 
their own lives unto death, and whom the Lord will avenge. 

A hero in his chains and starvation, Jeremiah still, like Job, 
held fast his integrity ; until he, in a measure, wore out the malice 
of his foes. Zedekiah sent for him, and in a private conference 
asked, “ Is there any word from the Lord ? ” 

“ There is,” replied the man, strong in weakness, the sensitive 
spirit, which in calm scorn of his own tortures, daily bore witness 
amid sharp fires; “ thou shalt be delivered into the hand of the 
king of Babylon.” 

He then protested against the cruelties practised upon him ; ap- 
pealed to the fulfilment of his prophecies as an Evidence of his 
divine commission, adding, “ Let my supplication be accepted be- 
fore thee; that thou cause me not to return to the house of Jona- 
than the scribe, lest I die there.” 

Moved by his remonstrances, the king gave orders that Jere- 
miah should be kept in the court of the prison rather than in the 
dungeon, and that a piece of bread should be given him u daily 
from the bakers’ street,” until all the bread in the city was spent. 
This suggests the extremity of the people in their present state of 
siege, and the obstinacy of their resistance. 

Even in the court of the prison Jeremiah uttered renewed pre- 
dictions of disaster, and a deputation of the hostile nobles waited 
on the king, requesting that he should be put to death. 

“ Behold,” replied the puppet sovereign, “ he is in your hand, 
for the king is not he that can do anything against you.” 

Even now, when, to all. appearance, these enemies might have 
torn the prophet to pieces, God restrained them, and they cast him 
into a dungeon. But what a dungeon ! Horrible as any the in- 
quisition could boast ; far worse than that where the “ prisoner of 
Chillon ” wore out his doleful days. The only communication 


JEREMIAH. 


421 


with “ upper air ” was a trap-door in the roof ; through this they 
let down the inspired Levite of Anathoth, by cords. The 
bottom of this vile place was covered deep with foul mire, and 
into it the prisoner sank. There was no water to supply his 
thirst, nothing but that slimy ooze. Here he must die. But still 
he would concede nothing. He had spoken the truth, and must 
continue to do so with his latest breath. 

A friend yet remained to him — Ebed-Melech an Ethiopian ; 
one of the eunuchs of the king’s household. This man, hearing 
of the seer’s doleful condition, went in search of the king. Un- 
happy Zedekiah, beset by foes without and foes within the city, 
a monarch lacking power and wealth, with no reliance on God, 
no promise for the future; but dragged, like one standing on 
quicksands hour by hour, to a horrible fate, was even more to be 
commiserated than Jeremiah. Ebed-Melech found the king sit- 
ting in the gate of Benjamin, and urged upon him the instant 
need of a rescue of Jeremiah, for, said he, “ he is like to die for 
hunger in the place where he is ; for there is no more bread in 
the city.” 

Moved to tardy compassion, Zedekiah ordered the Ethiopian 
to take with him thirty men, and release the captive. From that 
day until Jerusalem was taken by the Chaldeans, Jeremiah and 
Baruch, his friend, abode in the court of the prison. 

At last the overthrow of the holy city was complete, after a 
year and a half of siege and famine, the defences were carried, the 
victorious Chaldeans rushed into the stronghold of Zion, burned 
houses and palaces ; overthrew the shattered walls; pillaged, mur- 
dered and carried captive, until the “city had become solitary that 
was full of people.” Her Nazarites lay at the head of every 
street, black unburied corpses ; the Temple was sacked, and then 
destroyed, while Zedekiah, who had made the most miserable of 
failures in king-craft, had the death-throes of his children for his 
last sight on earth. 


422 


JEREMIAH. 


One gleam of light falls across the dark picture of a nation’s 
ruin: Nebuchadnezzar gave particular charge concerning Jere- 
miah. “ Take him and look well to him ; do him no harm, but 
do unto him even as he shall say to thee.” 

Jeremiah was accordingly given up to the care of the new gov- 
ernor, Gedaliah, one of the noblest characters sketched for us in a 
few salient touches by the pen of the inspired historian. 

Gedaliah’s father, Ahikam, had long been the prophet’s friend ; 
rest seemed at last to have come to this troubled-tossed spirit : he 
went to fair Mizpeh, a town perched on a lofty height, some four 
miles northwest of Jerusalem. Hence Gedaliah swayed the vine- 
dressers, and herdsmen, the “ poor of the land,” by a law of love. 

The blessed calm lasted but two months : then Gedaliah was 
murdered. Jeremiah and Baruch escaped the massacre which 
had been plotted to exterminate all the adherents of the governor. 
Ishmael, the murderer, carried them off in his train, but they 
were rescued by Johanan. Now only one friend was left the seer 
— Baruch the scribe. 

Johanan added to his other iniquities that he brought Jere- 
miah and Baruch prisoners to Egypt, to Tahpanhes. This 
city, the Daphne of profane history, was on the Pelusiac arm 
of the Nile. 

Jeremiah had ever been the enemy of Egypt and its abomi- 
nations; yet here the immortal author of the Lamentations, 
a kingdom’s elegy, was compelled to dwell among a race of apos- 
tates ; beholding their idolatries, as “ they poured incense to the 
queen of heaven.” 

For forty years of his full intellectual and physical strength, 
Jeremiah, eating the bread of affliction, prophesied for the Lord 
<( in the midst of an evil and adulterous generation.” If he 
wrote the last few verses of the book of Jeremiah, recording the 
end of the captivity, he must then have been more than a hun- 


JEREMIAH. 


423 


dred years of age. The tradition of the early Christians is, 
that he was stoned to death by angry renegades at Tahpanhes. 
An old Alexandrian story relates, that Alexander the Great, 
venerating so pure a life and so marvellous a prophet, brought his 
bones to the city Alexandria, and entombed them there. 

The Jews, on the contrary, affirm, that when Nebuchadnezzar 
conquered Egypt, Jeremiah and Baruch accompanied the victo- 
rious army to Chaldea, and spent their last days in peace, comfort- 
ing the exiles. 

Cassandra of prophets, this man forever foretold the coming 
evil, and was forever unbelieved. Other seers were sent to 
cry u Turn to your God, and be strong in him ;” but it was borne 
in upon the shrinking soul of Jeremiah, as upon Phocion, that 
there was no safety but humiliation ; no help but entire submis- 
sion; Judah’s day of grace was past. 

But amid hatred, scorn, vice and treachery, from which his 
mimosa-like spirit shivered away in acute agony, the man had a 
grand consolation. 

The Divine face of Christ shone upon him through the dark- 
ness; he saw the thorn-crowned and glorified head of the Re- 
deemer ; as his earthly pathway wound into deeper and deeper 
night, the voice of a God clothed in humanity, filled and solaced 
him ; a hand, a Brother’s hand, pierced, yet strong and loving, led 
him up the steep ascent, the blackness of his Sinai, cloud-hung 
and thunder-girt, yet bearing on its heights the pavilion of the 
All Radiant, “ the God of Israel, and there was under his feet a 
paved work of a sapphire stone, as it were the body of heaven for 
clearness.” Into that glory the worn and weeping prophet passed 
at length, and all was glad. Through his earthly life he was pe- 
culiarly a type of a suffering Saviour, despised and rejected of 
men, bearing alone the burden of the world. 

A lower comparison presents itself between the writer of the 


424 


JEREMIAH. 


Lamentations and the sweet singer of the Divina Commedia, the 
man of Anathoth and the Florentine. In every age, aye, in every 
generation, these sorrowing, devout souls, lonely in a crowded 
world, appear ; for these hundreds of years they have mourned in 
the strains of the Levite of Anathoth, their great prototype. Of 
him they learn to hold fast a good confession of their faith, and 
look for rest, where rest is only to be found, in the fair land where 
“ God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.’* 


XXI. 


NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 

THE FALL OF THE HEAD OF GOLD. 


IX hundred and four years before Christ, there entered 
into peaceable possession of the greatest monarchy on 
earth, one whom God himself calls “ a king of kings, to 
whom the Lord of heaven had given kingdom, power, 
strength and glory ” — even “ Nebo, the protector against misfor- 
tune” — Nebuchadnezzar, the magnificent. 

This sovereign stood on the very apex of human splendor; all 
the empires before him formed an ascending series, culminating in 
him ; all that came after him slowly declined from his glory, 
which none could equal. 

If, with modern self-sufficiency, we were inclined to question 
this ; to point to one or another most potent nation, which has 
formed one of the mighty landmarks of time, and claim for that 
the supremacy, we should yet be silenced by the fact, that when 
He, before whom all realms from the Deluge to the Second 
Advent were present facts, framed a vision which should express 
his estimate of the relation of the successive dominions of earth, 
he set the kingdom of the Chaldeans as its crowning point, and 
Nebuchadnezzar as its Head of Gold. 

The first assured notice which we have of this prince in history 
shows him chastising the insolence of Pharaoh Necho, ruler of 
Egypt. This is the dayspring of the young Chaldean’s power ; 

425 



426 


NEBUCII ADNEZZA R. 


here, in the camp of the Assyrians, shines forth the morning 
splendor of the king of the fire worshippers, and Nebuchadnezzar 
begins, like the day god of their adoration, to run his race. 

“ The Babylonian Empire,” says Rawlinson, “ lasted only 
eighty-eight years; nearly half of that period, it was under the 
dominion of Nebuchadnezzar, their greatest monarch. It is 
scarcely too much to say, that but for him, the Babylonians would 
have had no place in history.” 

Nebuchadnezzar was not only born great, heir of a throne, but 
he achieved greatness for himself. He was a man whose splendid 
genius has never been paralleled. In him almost every form of 
greatness united, and in every gloriously developed talent, he had 
no peer but himself. Nebuchadnezzar, the unrivalled military 
strategist, found no equal on earth but Nebuchadnezzar, the sove- 
reign diplomat; Nebuchadnezzar, the artist, had no rival but 
Nebuchadnezzar, the architect; in grandeur of aesthetic concep- 
tion, and in skill of mechanical construction, this man stood with 
the greatest builders of antiquity at his feet. 

He was a conqueror, who would have laughed in the face of 
Cyrus and Alexander ; and when he had spread his conquests so 
far that lie knew no limit to his kingdom but the boundaries of 
earth; he was so high of soul, that he recognized the grand 
regions of art as new fields for his achievement, and found no 
barrier to his advancement, but his own mortality. 

He was a true oriental ; he comes before us, evoked from the 
solemn splendors of the past, in all the romance of the storied east. 
A tiger lies half asleep in his veins ; one moment it is a creature 
of strange grace and beauty, the next it darts somewhither like a 
lightning flash, and is drinking blood ! 

This Nebuchadnezzar was a despot the most unlimited that the 
world has ever seen ; because, while living in a land where law is 
the will of the sovereign, he was doubly entrenched in the abject 


NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 


427 


fear and unbounded love of his subjects. At once their tyrant 
and their benefactor, the whole heart of the empire beat in his 
pulses, and was swayed by his thought. 

He was a being of moods as various as the climes under his 
dominion. Frosty Caucasus, corn and peach bearing plain, and 
burning wild that scorched all life, found their antitypes in his 
soul. High above other men as the sun is high above earth ; 
generous as the sun which blesses ; relentless as the sun which 
blights ; and as the sun unchanged, shining on, perfecting both 
death and beauty ; glorious as the sun sweeping from rising to 
setting in unchallenged state, was Nebuchadnezzar, the Head of 
Gold. There was but One higher than the king of Babylonia, 
and that One covered with darkness his magnificence, as some 
day he shall darken all of earth’s unholy splendors. 

Hardly had Nebuchadnezzar, the young warrior, wrested the 
conqueror’s laurel from fharaoh Necho, when the dying hand of 
Nabopolassar yielded him, from the Babylonian palace, the impe- 
rial diadem. 

Kingdoms, in those days, were apt to be disputed inheritances. 
The first on the spot, provided his hand were strong enough, 
grasped, and held the glittering prize. 

The funeral obsequies of Nabopolassar had already been cele- 
brated, before his hero son arrived at the capital ; but at the eagle 
glance of the heir, opposition sank palsied, and Nebuchadnezzar 
gained that firm seat, whereon he afterwards withstood so great a 
shock, as would have rent the throne of any other oriental king. 

Isaiah, the most eloquent of the Hebrews, seems to hesitate to 
choose speech that shall befit his theme, when he prophesies of 
Babylon, the centre of Nebuchadnezzar’s power. He calls it 
“ Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees’ 
excellency ; the golden city ; Lucifer, son of the morning ! exalted 
above the stars of God.” 


428 


NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 


The foundations of this city had been laid by Nimrod, the 
heaven-defying rebel of the days of Shem. Nabopolassar advanced 
it to be the capital of his kingdom, and Nebuchadnezzar so gar- 
nished, enriched and glorified it, that no creation of finite hands 
has ever touched the hem of its splendors. Beside this Babylon, 
Borne would have been a bauble ; Paris, in her hour of pride, a 
fragile toy. Herodotus gives it an area eight times as great as 
London ; it held in its bosom adornments which would have 
* graced whole continents ; beside its wealth, the abundance of 
Solomon was poverty. Compare Babylon as we may to other 
cities, we shall still be in the case of the shepherd Tityrus, who, 
likening great things to small, compared Borne to Mantua, and 
making his pilgrimage to the seven-hilled empress of lands, 
found that — 

44 Yerum lisec tantum alias inter caput extulit urbes, 

Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.” 

To this city and empire, Nebuchadnezzar was what was Solo- 
mon to Jewry ; he built, enlarged, strengthened, adorned, rendered 
beautiful and terrible, until the kingdom was Nebuchadnezzar, 
and Nebuchadnezzar was the kingdom. 

Immediately around this capital lay the province Babylon, one 
of the most fruitful, enchanting and salubrious regions of earth. 
Herodotus says of it: “All this country is like Egypt, well 
watered ; no part of the known world produces so good wheat ; 
and it so abounds in corn, as to yield two or three hundred fold. 
Wheat and barley carry a blade four digits in breadth ; the palm 
tree grows over all the plain, bearing fruit, whereof they make 
bread, wine and honey.” 

In a district so fertile, this oriental despot fortified and embel- 
lished a city which has long been the theme of historians and 
poets ; whose surprising grandeur, when it passed into darkness. 


NEBUCHADNEZZAE. 


429 


was as if a planet had forever robbed the skies by its decay, and 
the very heavens were become mutable. 

“O sirs, O sirs ! a light is quenched afar, 

Look up, my masters, we have lost a star !” 

Berosus says, in his third book on Chaldea : “ To the old city, 
Nebuchadnezzar added a new one, and adorned the temples in 
the most magnificent fashion ; he walled the city in a becoming 
manner, and decorated its gates gloriously. It would be too 
much for me to attempt to describe the vast height and immense 
riches of the palaces.” 

Megasthenes, another ancient writer, records : “ This Nebuchad- 
nezzar, in his fortitude and the greatness of his actions, exceeded 
Hercules.” 

Writes Josephus : “ He surpassed, and was more fortunate than 
all the kings which ever went before him.” 

Pausanias says of Babylon : “ It was the greatest city that ever 
the sun rose upon.” 

In this city were the tower and temple of Bel us, the Chaldean 
Jupiter, of which the furniture in the sacred chapel was solid gold. 
On the summit of this tower was the great observatory, where 
the Babylonian astronomers, who excelled all others of their time, 
watched the rising and setting, and all the solemn evolutions of 
the heavenly hosts ; and wrought the problems of their astrology. 
Even when the kingdom was waning to its fall, this temple 
yielded twenty-one millions sterling in gold to the spoiler Xerxes. 
The walls of the palaces were encrusted with precious stones and 
paintings, glowing in deathless tints, that mock a burial of two 
thousand years. The floors were marble, the. pillars alabaster, 
jasper, agate, lapis lazuli, and sardonyx; sculptures of infinite 
variety, representing every form of animal life, decorated corridors, 
stairways and porticoes. 

Not the least of the wonders of this capital were the hanging 


430 


NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 


gardens, the most magnificent love gift ever offerred or received. 
Nabopolassar had married his son to Amyitis, the daughter of As- 
tyages, the Median king. Nebuchadnezzar received his bride with 
ardent affection ; all the wealth of his kingdom was at her feet. 
When she pined in the broad Chaldean plains for the wood- 
crowned hills familiar to her childhood, the genius and devotion 
of the royal husband created these wonders of the world ; moun- 
tains covered with forests, flowers, shady groves, fountains, plea- 
sure houses ; prodigious structures, which the Greeks were never 
weary of celebrating. 

To Babylon flowed the spoils of Egypt, Nineveh and Palestine; all 
that was most precious on earth ; thither, pilgrims from the falling 
empires of Mizraim and Phoenicia, journeyed the arts and sciences ; 
there also flocked the philosophers of the west for instruction. 

But while creating a capital such as it had never before entered 
into the heart of men to conceive, this monarch of Chaldea did 
not fail to extend his boundaries, and beautify his kingdom to its 
remotest outposts. He was the conqueror of Tyre, famous for 
merchandize ; whose traders were princes, whose beauty was like 
the garden of the Lord : Jerusalem and Egypt became his vassals, 
and recovered Syria yielded him its treasures. 

Megasthenes says, “He subdued Africa, Spain and the Ibe- 
rians indeed, this author goes farther and gives his hero- 
monarch power over the shores of the Euxine Sea, between Ar- 
menia and the Caucasus ; thus making him reign undisputed 
from the Atlantic to the Caspian, from the frost-white mountains 
to the burning Sahara ; from sea to sea, all climes and nations 
were bringing tribute, up to the glorious city ; and throned in its 
midst, was Nebuchadnezzar, supreme over all, the Head of Gold. 

Enthusiastic in architecture as he was bold in war, this sove- * 
reign, besides the temple, gardens, walls and palaces already enu- 
merated, undertook other labors and improvements, each one of 


NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 


431 


which would have secured earthly immortality. He constructed 
the grand Reservoir of Sippara, one hundred and forty miles in 
circumference ; and the Nahr Malcha canal, between the Eu- 
phrates and Tigris; he founded the city Teredon ; while a. hun- 
dred sites near Babylon bear on their bricks to this day the story 
of the wealth, power, and far-reaching wisdom of this indefatiga- 
ble king. 

The Arabs are ever recounting his glory and valor ; they as- 
cribe to him or his wife, the building of the canal Kerek Saideh, 
and others without number ; also the .reservoir in the city of 
Babylon. 

Thus briefly viewing his achievements, we see that this was a 
man at the pinnacle of earthly power. If ever a man had reason 
for pride and vain-glory, it was this one : high birth ; great ge- 
nius ; unexampled success ; the adulation of a world, these com- 
bined to provoke pride and self-sufficiency. In him came a grand 
lesson to mankind that God will not brook pride, even in the 
loftiest. A haughty heart he will not suffer. In the eyes of 
Jehovah, angels are chargeable with folly, the heavens are un- 
clean, and wheeling worlds, to which our sun is a wan spark, are 
as the dust beneath his feet. 

We have sketched the external splendor and circumstance of 
this royal Chaldean ; we would now gain a few glimpses of his 
inner, spiritual life : the oriental nature was never more fully de- 
veloped than in Nebuchadnezzar. He was deeply religious, but 
variable as to his creed : he “ feared the Lord, and served his own 
gods.” “ Of a truth,” he says to Daniel, “your God is a God of 
gods, and a Lord of kings;” and anon he makes a mighty image 
of gold for his master, Bel us, before which all men shall fall down 
and worship. « 

In awe and adoration, he exclaims : “ Blessed be the God of 
Shadrach, Meshaclr, and Abed-nego ; come hither, ye servants of 


432 


NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 


the Most High God ! ” Finally, he reaches that grand declara- 
tion and testimony — “ I praise and extol and honor the King of 
heaven; all whose works are truth and his ways judgment.” 

Like a true despot, he feels that in him is vested a right to 
govern ‘the thoughts and religious dispositions of men ; his sub- 
jects’ faith must be submissive to his ; he may define their creed 
and alter it ten times. 

He begins by being a worshipper of Bel us, and all his people 
kneel before his god ; after this, for Daniel’s sake, the Lord of 
eternity is admitted to equal honors with Bel. Next, he bids 
every one worship and serve his gods, and adore the great golden 
image, which he has set up ; but the sun of that day does not go 
down before he makes a decree that no man must open his lips 
against the Jehovah of the Jews, who is undoubtedly Highest in 
earth and sky. Thus, over the religion of his people, Nebuchad- 
nezzar sits like Olympian Jove : 

“ He spoke, and awful bends his sable brows, 

Shakes his ambrosial curls and gives the nod, 

The stamp of fate, and sanction of a god. 

High heaven with reverence the dread signal took, 

And all Olympus to the centre shook.” 

Like the supreme divinity of the Hellenic nation, this king 
would throne himself in majestic repose, and rule nations by a 
nod ! In wrath he is violent as a tiger ; “ cutting men in pieces, 
and turning their houses' to a dunghill,” is his favorite threat. If 
the Chaldean astrologers could not tell him his dream, which had 
fled from the royal mind as an image reflected in a pool flees when 
its original departs, they should be “ cut in pieces and their homes 
made a dunghill the same fate was reserved for all who did 
not worship the God who had delivered the three Hebrews. The 
prince of the eunuchs, Melzar, pathetically tells Daniel that if he 
fails to grow fat and beautiful, he will endanger his tutor’s head 


NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 


433 


to the king. With the most admirable sangfroid , the tyrant 
threatens a burning fiery furnace to those whose faith is stronger 
than their fear of him ; has it promptly made ready for the con- 
tumacious, and, unmoved, beholds the most mighty men of his 
army consumed in executing his commands. 

Xebuchadnezzar, as a conqueror, puts to death one captive king, 
Jehoiakim, and blinds the eyes of another, Zedekiah. These be- 
ing the ordinary proceedings of victors in his day, we may partly 
excuse them, but what apology can be olfered for that refinement 
of cruelty which insults the gory corpse of Jehoiakim, and makes 
the murder of his sons Zedekiah’s last sight on earth? This 
glorious Head of Gold is subject to fits of insane rage : “ He was 
angry and very furious, and commanded all the wise men of Baby- 
lon to be destroyed.” To the three Hebrews, “ He was full of 
fury, and the form of his visage was changed.” After these 
paroxysms of passion, he could be humble, devout, and grateful. 
He “ fell on his face and worshipped Daniel, and commanded that 
they should offer an oblation and sweet odours unto him.” Obe- 
dient to DaniePs suggestion, he set Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed- 
nego as provincial governors ; and, unasked, made Daniel himself 
chief over wise men and rulers. To his whole empire he makes 
proclamation of his folly and his fall, his sin and repentance. 
While he can be cruel as Sargon, he is the fondest of lovers to his 
Median wife. Though he is arrogant beyond expression, he ex- 
hibits toward Daniel a faithfulness of friendship like that of 
David for Jonathan. 

God showed this monarch especial favor in all his reign ; not 
only in crowning him with glory and prosperity ; but by impos- 
ing a tremendous judgment ; and yet earlier in placing among his 
servants four sons of Judah, who were of sterner stuff than the 
Assyrian courtiers. These four men did the splendid despot a 

favor seldom accorded to men in his position, they freely spoke 
28 


434 


NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 


their minds, and set before him ungarnished truth. Besides this, 
the great learning which Nebuchadnezzar himself cherished in his 
wise men, struck the shackles from their spirits, and they stand 
before him saying, “ There is not a man upon earth that can show 
the king’s matter ; therefore no king, lord, or ruler hath asked 
such things at any time from any magician, or astrologer, or Chal- 
dean ; it is a rare thing that the king requireth, and there is none 
other that can show it to the king except the gods, whose dwel- 
ling is not in the flesh.” 

After this manly speech, we feel highly pleased that Daniel 
saves these wise heads. 

The three princes of Judah also gave the monarch a splendid 
specimen of free speech : “ O king, we are not careful to answer 
thee in this matter ; be it known unto thee that we will not serve 
thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.” 

But Daniel, as befits his lofty character, goes beyond the rest, 
into such rebuke and exhortation as it has not often been the good 
fortune of an Eastern king to hear : “ O king, let my counsel be 
acceptable unto thee ; and break off thy sins by righteousness, and 
thine iniquities by showing mercy to the poor ; if it may be a 
lengthening of thy tranquillity.” 

To Nebuchadnezzar came three grand experiences superior to 
any granted to other heathen. The first was in answer to his 
earnest desire to know what might be in the kingdom after him. 
Before him was set a vision of the great empires of earth; the 
marvellous splendor of the dream suiting the exuberant imagi- 
nation, the vigorous thought, and the ardent ambition of the 
mind before which it was painted upon night and sleep. The 
dreaming sovereign of Assyria beheld his own mighty empire, 
himself its Head of Gold ; he saw the lesser glories of the Persian 
power, and that third kingdom which under Alexander should 
bear rule over all the earth. Before him rose Rome, the iron 


NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 


435 


dominion, strong, breaking in pieces and subduing all things ; 
Rome pagan, “ breaking and bruising.” He saw Rome pagan 
lapse to Rome papal, Church and State mingled in such poor 
union as iron and clay, which cannot be welded together ; dividing 
into ten kingdoms, each a diverse interest, like, yet different. Then, 
lo, before him rose the kingdom of our Lord Christ ; a stone, cut 
out of the mountain without hands, falling first on the feet of the 
image ; crushing clay, iron, brass, silver and gold ; until all were 
like the chaff of the summer threshing floors, carried away by a 
whirlwind of the wrath of God ; while the stone became a moun- 
tain, and filled all the earth, a kingdom that should stand forever. 
Thus, such a vision as was accorded to Daniel, Ezekiel, and John, 
the latest seer, was given to Nebuchadnezzar, the idolatrous 
Chaldean. Surely it betokened some signal mercy of God toward 
him. 

After this came in the very acme of his pride, cruelty and false 
worship, a yet more marvellous revealing. He who has been 
taught that his will w T as to sway all souls like the breath of God ; 
he who has never by suffering learned pity, looks with eyes of 
triumphant rage tov r ard that blazing fiery furnace, heated to seven- 
fold fury. He looks, and the obsequious servants round his foot- 
stool direct their gaze with his ; but the hand of the angel which 
touched the eyes of Elisha’s young man in Dothan cleared earthly 
film from the vision of Nebuchadnezzar, and rendered him capable 
of the sight celestial. Divine discernment became his : “ Lo, I see 
four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no 
hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.” 
He had heard the Jewish exiles telling of their Coming One. He 
had heard of Him by the hearing of the ear, but now his eye saw 
Him ; he beheld a human form, and was given power to discern 
one fairer than the sons of men, the divine effulgence shone through 
the fleshly veil ; it was his, as it was Manoah’s, to see God and live. 


436 


NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 


By this wonderful revelation Nebuchadnezzar’s idolatry was 
-rooted out. We hear of him no more as a worshipper of false 
gods. He proclaims, “ There is none other God that can deliver 
after this sort.” 

Between this proclamation, and his penitent history of the 
greatest experience of his life, Scripture leaves the narrative of his 
exploits to profane history ; the only hint of his doings that we 
have in Holy Writ is Daniel’s monition : “ break off thy sins by 
righteousness,, and thine iniquities by showing mercy to the poor.” 
From this, we judge that the monarch had been carrying matters 
with a high hand ; indulging himself extensively in whatever he 
desired, and wringing the price of his magnificent surroundings 
from a helpless and overburdened people. 

The king, moreover, records of himself that he was “ at rest in 
his house, and flourishing in his palace ; ” there was none to stay 
his hand; no foe without, no traitor within. None dared wag the 
head against Nebuchadnezzar. This prosperity was feeding his 
arrogance ; his heart was more and more haughty ; he likened 
himself to that King of Day whose blaze never was hidden from 
his empire ; the cries of sufferers never entered his gorgeous 
palaces; he saw sapphires and lapis lazuli and the jeweled spoils 
of Tyre, but no piteous tears nor coursing blood of his groaning 
serfs ; it was all the old story of despotism : 

“ The people here, a beast of burden slow, 

Toiled onward, pricked with goads and stings 
Here played a tiger, rolling to and fro, 

The heads and crowns of kings.” 

But a watcher, and a Holy One, had eyes on this royal tiger, 
and would bring him to “ a man's heart” Conviction had come 
to Nebuchadnezzar when he beheld the Lord of earth and heaven 
walking in the furnace with his saints ; conversion came to him 
out of a terrible judgment. Strong natures demand strong mea- 


NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 


437 


sures. The judgments of the Lord do not fall unannounced, like 
lightning from a clear sky ; God warns before he strikes. 

All the bondage, the famine and pestilence, and bitterness of 
servitude which visited recreant Israel, were foretold by the 
prophets late and early, and were cried aloud upon Mount Ebal. 
David “ saw the shadow ere it fell ; ” Nineveh had space for 
repentance ; Egypt was warned again and again. Before the un- 
godly, the Lord unfolds the advancing doom. So, when for the 
pride of Nebuchadnezzar’s heart, vengeance was prepared, a vision 
came as its avant courier. No human power caused the king to 
tremble, he laughed his enemies to scorn ; but in the midst of his 
glorious ease came a sign from Heaven, and he was afraid. To 
his trouble the magicians, astrologers and soothsayers, whom he 
summoned from their watch in the tower of Belus, brought no 
comfort. If they had any dim guess of the intention of the dream, 
they dared not utter it. 

There was one man in Chaldea “ in whom resided the spirit of 
the holy gods,” ever the king’s refuge in perplexity, and to him he 
appealed. Daniel had received no forewarning; and when, as 
the king’s speech flowed eloquently on, describing what he had 
seen, a flood of grief and consternation poured over the prophet’s 
soul. Daniel “ sat astonished for one hour.” 

From his friend’s dismay the monarch gathered courage. His 
high heart rose to meet the emergency. Evil was threatened to 
his house, but he says bravely and kindly : “ Belteshazzar, let 
not the dream, nor the interpretation thereof, trouble thee.” He 
is not like Ahab who condemns Micaiah to prison, to the bread 
and water of affliction, because he had a vision of all “ Israel 
Scattered on the hills as sheep without a shepherd.” “ I saw a tree 
in the midst of the earth, and the height thereof was great,” 
says Nebuchadnezzar. He bends forward, and intense anxiety is 
Written on every feature. “ It is thou, O king,” replies the 


1 


438 


NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 


prophet, u that art grown great and strong ; for thy greatness is 
grown and reacheth unto heaven, and thy dominion unto the end 
of the earth.” 

The gloom of the advancing desolation darkens on Nebuchad- 
nezzar’s face; ruin had in dream swept over that goodly tree. 
But he is no coward, afraid to learn his fate ; and in earnest tones 
he proceeds with his dream, awaiting its explication. 

“ I saw a watcher and a holy one come down from heaven, and 
he cried aloud, Hew down this tree, and cut off his branches, 
shake off his leaves, gather his fruit ; let the beasts get away 
from under it ; and the fowls from his branches.” 

Here was utter desolation decreed the leafy monarch of the 
forest. Nebuchadnezzar had doubtless, on his campaigns, seen 
some tremendous tree rush to its fall, under the woodman’s stroke; 
dragging down all lesser growths, and shaking the earth with its 
ruin. 

Solemn is the prime minister’s reading of the omen. They 
who visited the oracles of Dodona, Delphi, Jupiter Ammon, and 
the Sibyl, and received answers from the rustle of the sacred oaks, 
from the intoxicated Pythia, or written upon leaves, were ever 
left in doubt by interpretations capable of varied reading. Be- 
tween diverse answers, they were quite as much in the dark as 
before they approached the shrine. But Daniel’s interpretation 
of his monarch’s dream is capable of no misconstruction. “ This 
is the decree : they shall drive thee from the dwellings of men . . . 
thy abode shall be with the beasts of the field . . . and seven years 
shall pass over thee . . . until thou know, that the Most High ruleth 
in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will.” 

This is the grand lesson to be learned by the wayward and 
vain-glorious despot ; and was through him to be taught to all 
the earth. Strange, we say, that having it so plainly set before 
him, he did not lay it to heart then and there. 


NEBUCHADNEZZAK. 


439 


But this is a marvel common to the perverse human soul. 
Christ cries : “ I am the way,” “ There is none other name 
given,” “ He that cometh not in by the door, is a thief and a 
robber.” 

But in spite of that, men have ever since been going about to 
find ways of their own — have sought to establish their own 
righteousness, and have risked appearing before the judgment seat 
as thieves and robbers. 

Those two men — Formality and Hypocrisy — whom Christian 
saw “ come tumbling over a wall on the left hand of the narrow 
way,” were not the only specimens of their kind. And although 
these two, and all their successors, shall be “ lost in the great 
wood — Danger,” or “ stumble and fall amid the dark mountains 
of Destruction, and rise no more,” they will have followers in all 
time to come. 

There was yet a glimmer of hope in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream : 
“ Leave the stump in the earth,” proclaimed the holy watcher. 
“ Let it be wet with the dew of heaven . . . until seven times pass.” 
“Thy kingdom shall be sure unto thee,” reads the seer; “ after 
that thou shalt have known that the heavens do rule.” 

Here is a repetition of that one lesson, which the king found it 
so hard to learn ; and which the Almighty was resolved to fix 
upon his mind. 

After such a portent, one would think the royal dreamer would 
have humbled himself and taken warning, at least for a time. 
Instead of this, in a twelve months, he provokes the fulfilment of 
the vision. 

But when had human heart so much occasion to be puffed up? 
Every breeze bore to him the submission of conquered nations; 
the praises of his poets; the flatteries of his subjects: he heard 
hammer, axe, and trowel ringing, the music whereby arose wall, 
palace, and tower, as great Thebes rose to the swelling strains 


440 


NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 


of Amph ion’s golden lyre. Wherever lie looked were the crea- 
tions of his hand; the trophies of his power. 

Thus it came to pass, that on a summer’s day he walked in the 
palace of the kingdom of Babylon ; probably upon the lofty 
terraces of the hanging gardens, constructed in the court of the 
favorite palace. All the wealthy province lay spread at his feet. 
The plains were covered with waving crops, that could laugh at 
threat of death; between them ran the broad Euphrates, from 
which the corn drank its strength. The feathery palm trees, 
with their crimson clusters of honey-dropping fruit, were set 
against all the sky. Here wound a caravan coming up from 
Egypt bearing linen, wine of Helbon, and treasures of art; 
yonder the train of camels, drifting in like ships from the wide 
sea of the Sahara, were laden with spices and fragrant gums, and 
tropic fruits. Here Tyre sent her purple, ivory, precious stones, 
gold, chests of cedar filled with rich apparel. Syria entered at 
the western gate, with her store of “ emeralds, purple, and broid- 
ered work, fine linen, coral and agate.” Here hung banners 
captured from Africa, Armenia, and distant Spain. There were 
the Greek scholars passing along the streets, who had come to 
learn wisdom of the wisest. In yonder prisons, kings were lying 
captive. Chariots jostled each other in the crowded ways ; batta- 
lions of armed men went forth for assured conquests. Elephants 
from India were kept to swell his train of state ; he had horses, 
on whose crimson bridles rang bells of gold, whose hoofs were 
shod with silver. His eye ran along the mighty wall, a five hun- 
dred million solid feet of masonry,” says Rawlinson. Slaves 
toiled on the sides of the hanging gardens, those mountains of 
beauty. From the court of the harem below rippled up laughter 
from the loveliest of the lovely of all the beauty-rich east, who 
bowed at the feet of Median Amyitis. 

Then swelled the monarch’s bosom with new access of the pride 


N EBUCH A DNEZZ AR. 


441 


hateful to high Heaven. He lifted his face to the dome of the 
sky, and challenged the King who sitteth on the circle of the 
firmament : “ Is not this great Babylon, which I have built for 
the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the 
honor of my majesty ! ” 

“ His trust was with the Eternal to be deemed 
Equal in strength, and rather than be less 
Cared not to be at all.” 

Delay was ended ; swift came the answer, “ even while the word 
was yet in his mouth ; ” destruction swept upon him sudden as 
the coming, of the Son of Man, “ like the lightning that shineth 
from one part of heaven even unto the other ! ” 

“ O king Nebuchadnezzar, unto thee it is spoken ; the kingdom 
is departed from thee. . . . Seven times shall pass over thee, until 
thou know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, 
and giveth it to whomsoever he will.” 

This king of kings was to learn that he was only a vassal of the 
sky, and must render the homage of his heart to Him from whom 
he held his dominion in fee. 

A horrible form of mania seized the despot. Lycanthropy, a 
madness that levels man to a brute, took supreme possession of 
him, who had built great Babylon. 

In the hour “ when his heart was lifted up, and his mind 
hardened in pride,” he was deposed from his kingly throne, 
and they “took his glory from him. And he was driven 
from the sons of men ; and his heart was made like the 
beasts, and his dwelling was with the wild asses; they fed him 
with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of 
heaven.” 

Thus, in after years, Daniel describes this insanity, and its con- 
sequences, to Nebuchadnezzar’s grandson, Belshazzar. And again 
the important lesson is repeated: “Until he knew that the most 


442 


NEBUCH A DNEZZ AR. 


high God ruleth in the kingdom of men, and that he appointeth 
it to whomsoever he will.” 

* 

This fact of an ever-present, jealous, all-ruling God, dividing 
and disposing the affairs of men great and small ; feeding the 
raven, and meting out crowns and sceptres, is the grand doctrine 
men should lay to heart. If it were made a first principle in the 
tuition of kings, perhaps there would not now be sixteen throne- 
less monarchs remitted to the charities of Europe. 

Mad ; no more a man and a sovereign, but a beast in human 
form, Nebuchadnezzar tore off his gorgeous robes and the glitter- 
ing insignia of his power. Strange hunger seized him ; he craved 
the grass and rank weeds of the field for food ; his human speech 
was exchanged for the cries of a brute. He grovelled on the 
earth ; refused the shelter of the palace dome with its painted 
splendors, and the luxury of his couch ; and wandered out into 
the dew- wet plain, under the shining stars. 

There were no mad houses in those days; had this maniac 
been a common man, they might have cut his throat, or 
chained him to a pillar, to starve his fury and his life out to- 
gether. But no one could coerce the Babylonian despot, even 
when he was lost to his humanity ; he must have his own way, 
mad or sane. Medicine, in those days, was the least understood 
of the sciences. The royal physicians had no remedy for this 
case, but a hope that like would cure like; and that being 
turned adrift among his beastly compeers, he would soon get 
enough of it. 

Another king might have here lost all his future ; some usurper 
would have seized his abandoned state, and have put an end to 
the rabid sovereign. But the care of this man’s dominion was 
with God, and the decree was that the kingdom should be sure 
unto him. He had sinned in a high place ; he was to repent, and 
do better on the same lofty eminence. 


NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 


443 


The Lord works by natural causes ; he had girt the royalty of 
‘Nebuchadnezzar with the love of his subjects, the devotion of a 
high-spirited wife, whose hands were not too weak to hold the 
reins of government ; a prime minister such as Daniel ; and 
a sure prophecy that seven years should end the direful visi- 
tation, and restore the man, not only to himself, but to a nobler 
estate. 

Thus the Scripture records, “ He was driven from men ; and did 
eat grass with the oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of 
heaven, till his hairs were grown as eagles’ feathers, and his nails 
as birds’ claws.” 

Ah, how the Head of Gold had fallen ! Who that came by, 
would believe that this was Nebuchadnezzar, chief of the 
kings of the earth? When was royalty so debased, so shorn 
of its beams? The nations may now look upon him narrowly, 
and say, “ Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, 
and did shake kingdoms? All the kings of the earth lie in 
glory, even every one of them in his own house, but thou art 
cast out like an abominable branch, as a carcass trodden under 
feet.” 

He who would have set his throne among the stars was cut 
down ; his courtiers could cry : 

“If thou beest he, but oh, how fallen ! how changed 
From him who, in the happy realms of light, 

Clothed with transcendant brightness, didst outshine 
Myriads though bright ! ” 

Seven years thus pass, when as suddenly as his reason fled, it 
returns in full strength. His last mental act had been self- 
glorification ; his first use of returned intelligence is adoration 
of God ; truly affliction had worked in him some very excellent 
fruits. 

Wisdom and voice came back together. He is alone in the 


444 


NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 


wild. Beasts are his only comrades; winds whisper, leaves 
rustle, the skies shine over Babylon ; he lifts his eyes, his heart 
rises to heights of joy before unknown, he sees his fallen estate and 
appreciates his coming exaltation ; and he cries aloud, “ blessing, 
praising and honoring the Most High who liveth forever, whose 
dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom from 
generation to generation.” He has reached now the fulness of 
the lesson set him. He acknowledges, “ He doeth according 
to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants 
of earth ; and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What 
doest thou?” 

The last words of this king recorded in Scripture are a 
glorious outpouring .of penitence and praise: “ I extol arid 
honor the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his 
ways judgment : and those that walk in pride he is able to 
abase.” 

It was worth a terrible experience fully to have learned this 
lesson ; having laid it to heart, we may hope the throne of Chal- 
dea was to this grand monarch the stepping-stone to a higher king- 
dom ; and that the close of his reign on earth marked the begin- 
ning of his reign with God. 

During the sovereign’s incapacity his wife held the power for 
him; his son and successor made an effort to forestall his future 
inheritance, but the revolt was suppressed. Nebuchadnezzar found 
ready for him a kingdom which, during the seven years of his 
own aberration, had only grown in strength and glory. The 
remainder of his reign was but added prosperity ; the sun 
which had risen so bright, which had had so glorious a march 
through heaven, obscured but by one swift tempest, which rolled 
away and left the sovereign orb in full effulgence, wheeled 
to setting with unshorn magnificence, and went down without a 
cloud. 


NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 


445 


After a reign of forty-four years, Nebuchadnezzar died, aged 
eighty. With him perished the real strength and glory of Chal- 
dea. His two successors, weak and wicked, lost what their royal 
parent had gained. Foes besieged the city, the Euphrates itself 
turned traitor ; conqueror after conqueror passed his hosts 
through glorious Babylon but to spoil and destroy. None 
who went against the golden city, went in vain. He who 
stood whole nights on his watchtower, “ saw a chariot with a 
couple of horse-men, and he answered and said, Babylon is 
fallen, is fallen, and all the graven images of her gods are 
broken to the ground.” 

Babylon, as foretold by Jeremiah, “ has become an astonishment 
among the nations. Her cities are a desolation, a dry land and a 
wilderness ; a land wdiere no man dwelleth, neither doth any son 
of man pass thereby.” 

Isaiah delivered a kindred prophecy, which is every whit ful- 
filled : “ The wild beasts of the desert shall lie there ; and their 
houses shall be full of doleful creatures; owls shall dwell there, 
and satyrs shall dance there ; and the wild beasts of the islands 
shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant 
palaces.” 

At this day, Babylon is a place of deserted heaps ; the Arabs, 
full of superstitious fear, will not camp upon the spot accursed. 
The mighty fabric of empire raised by Nebuchadnezzar has 
melted away like cloudy tower and battlement, painted on a sun- 
set sky. To her half-forgotten site wanders the lonely antiqua- 
rian, to question of the past. On scatttered bricks and broken 
base and pilaster ; on crumbled wall and ruined aqueduct and 
arch, he reads the name which once bowed the knees of nations — 1 
Nebuchadnezzar. He hears the bittern cry, and the owl hoot 
along Birs Nimroud ; he turns, with his pick, the earth, piled 
into strange tumuli, and he finds these hillocks the grave of a 


446 


NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 


nation, the sepulchre of a once regnant race. Above them grow 
bending grasses with evanescent flowers, and small blue and 
starry blossoms, and as they bloom they write the kingdom’s 
epitaph : 


44 LO THIS IS THE NATION THAT MADE NOT GOD HER TRUST ! ” 


XXII. 

DANIEL, 


THE SAINTLY COURTIER. 



OD never puts a man in a position so trying that it is 
bejond the power of divine grace to sustain him. The 
Strengthening Spirit is infinite ; the cares, vanities, trials, 
and seductions of earth are finite. With every temptation 


there is opened a way of escape. The reason of so many failures 
is, that men will not see or accept the opportunity of safety. One 
man proclaims that if he were not so persecuted, tried and baffled, 
he would be a shining light among Christians. Another cries out, 
that he has been forced to a position so eminent, is so laden with 
cares of state, the exactions of society, and the expectations of the 
public, that he cannot find a calm hour to make his peace with 
God, nor a quiet path wherein to walk, as he truly wishes he 
might do, toward heaven. 

There is a man in Scripture, Daniel by name, who shows us how 
the most persecuted, threatened, distracted human soul, can cast 
its cares on God, and walk with him, serene on lofty heights in most 
glorious fellowship. And by a turn in his fortunes, this same man 
exemplifies how no sounding honors, no pomp of circumstance, no 
beguilings of sin, no braggart voice of society, can hedge out the 
heart from that garden of peace, the constant presence of the Lord ; 
can quell the high spirit seeking duty only;, can make the dross 
of earth outweigh the fine gold of the city that hath foundations. 


447 


448 


DANIEL. 


The scene of this story is Babylon in Chaldea; the time about 
six centuries before Christ. 

At this period, Babylon was the most luxurious and cultivated 
city upon earth. The foundations of Babylon were laid by Nimrod, 
the mighty hunter and rebel before the Lord. The metropolis 
stood upon the plain of Shinar. Like fairest fruits, it matured 
slowly ; Erech, Ur, and Ellasar outstripped it at the first, but 
these were blotted from the earth when stately Babylon was 
queen of nations. After the foundations of the tower of Babel 
were laid, the plain of Shinar' was the scene of the most tremen- 
dous revolution in all the history of the world. There were 
gathered the descendants of Ham, and very many of the children 
of Shem. Probably the family of Arphaxad remained in upper 
Mesopotamia withdrawn from the builders of the plain. 

A paragraph from William Osburn’s u Ancient Egypt ” gives 
a vivid picture of the terror and the inward compulsion when God 
drove asunder the nations of the earth. “ The fathers of Ancient 
Egypt first journeyed thither, across the Isthmus of Suez, taking 
with them the worship of the setting sun. How is it possible to 
resist the conclusion that they came thither from the plains of 
Babel, at the first dispersion of mankind, and that the civilization 
of Egypt was derived from the banks of the Euphrates? They 
marched westward before the mysterious impulse which drove 
them from the fertile plain of Shinar. They fled before, it, nor 
dared to tarry on the grassy slope of Jordan, nor in the shady 
valleys of Judah, nor by the waters of Shiloh which flow softly. 
The voice of a greater than man sounded in their ears ; the terror of 
an invincible power awed their spirits, and they dared not disobey. 
They braved perils and privations over an unknown desert before 
the same fearful impulse, nor were they ever allowed to rest, until 
they had reached the uttermost borders of the land which He who 
pursued them had destined them to people.” 


DANIEL. 


449 


Thus also fled the Canaanites, and the people who filled 
Ethiopia and Havilah. At Babel were left those who spread 
themselves over Mesopotamia, founded Nineveh, and peopled 
Assyria. 

Speaking of the Scriptural account of the tower of Babel, 
Hereen says : " There is perhaps nowhere else to be found a nar- 
rative so venerable for its antiquity, or so important in the history 
of civilization, in which we have at once preserved the traces of 
primeval international commerce, the first political associations, 
and the first erection of secure and permanent dwellings.” 

On the plains of Shinar the descendants of Asshur, the second 
son of Shem, united with the children of Ham. The Ilamitic 
was emphatically the building race, as the line of Cain had been 
before them. While other nations wandered far and long, the 
early Chaldeans remained in their first home, and filled the land 
with cities. Slow of growth as Babylon itself, the Chaldeans 
reached by degrees a power, strength and culture which made 
them lords of the world. They were a progressive people; in all 
their works they made sure advancement. Egypt, on the con- 
trary, suddenly blossomed into its best, and- then degenerated. 

The Babylonians used the arch; made aqueducts and tunnels;, 
understood the lever and roller ; engraved jewels; manufactured 
glass; were acquainted with the lens; and practised the arts of 
enamelling, inlaying and overlaying metals; they lived luxuriously 
thev were bold in war ; learned in sciences ; prosperous in wealth, 
strength, commerce and resources. 

While thus far cultivated and enlightened, they were in other 
respects barbarians'; their government was rude and despotic ; their 
religion grossly sensual ; their art materialistic. They served their 
day, and the purpose for which God made them a nation ; they 
by their very errors prepared the way in the East for centralized 
government; and were God’s scourge upon Jacob. 

29 


450 


DANIEL. 


Executing their mission of wrath against Judah, in the third 
year of Jehoiakim, Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem, and took 
with him to Babylon many of the noblest families. 

Among the captives was a youth named Daniel. We know 
nothing of his parentage, except the hint that it was royal, or 
very noble ; for the order of the king of Babylon was, that a from 
the king’s seed and the princes 99 should be chosen certain espe- 
cially bright and beautiful children, to be trained “ to stand before 
the king.” 

Among the children so selected was this Daniel, of gentle 
blood, fair face, and noble intellectual endowments. 

Some careful parents must have cherished his infancy; for when 
taken from his home, he knew the Jewish law, and purposed to 
keep it. 

Among other rare traits, the youth possessed, in a high degree, 
the power of pleasing ; a courtly grace, a happy faculty of express- 
ing himself; an engaging frankness, and a most wonderful gift 
of persuasion, seem to have more than justified the choice of 
Ashpenaz, when he took him to be trained from his early days as 
a courtier. 

The atmosphere of courts has never been deemed conducive to 
piety, particularly in the young. Of all courts, that of Babylon, 
the arrogant, luxurious and idolatrous, was least likely to be the 
nurse of holiness. 

Early privations and sufferings may mould a soul into patience, 
humility, faith and obedience; but to be early served, aud pam- 
pered, and flattered, is far less likely to develop good moral 
qualities. Out of long tribulations, a man may come matured and 
purified, enabled to resist temptations, and hold fast his integrity. 

To be taught in childhood paganism, despotism, and how to 
gratify the ear of kings, is a strange preparation for a manhood 
of sobriety, industry, and the fear of God. 


DANIEL. 


451 


Alone — separated from familiar faces, far from the wise mentors 
of infancy ; shut out from the hearing of the law of his Lord, 
Daniel not only preserves the integrity of his spirit, but grows in 
heavenly wisdom, prays Avithout ceasing, speeds onward in the 
way to Heaven, and takes with him those dearest friends, his fellow 
captives, his kinsmen, according to the flesh no doubt, who fol- 
lowed all the heavenward leadings of his stronger spirit. 

Martyr souls were they, ready to die, if need be, for their faith, 
yet able to live and maintain that faith in the midst of the most 
voluptuous court in the world. 

It was a common custom of Assyrian kings to forcibly remove 
the whole, or most important portion, of the population of con- 
quered nations to distant parts of their kingdom. The city 
Babylon overflowed with Jews, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Syrians 
and Moabites. The Babylonians were themselves a mixed race, 
and this continual introduction of foreign elements fully justifies 
the term Jeremiah applies to them — “ the mingled people.” 

The education of Daniel first attracts our attention. The com- 
mand of the king was, that during three years he should be 
Carefully instructed “ in the learning and tongue of the Chal- 
deans.” This includes also the Chaldean manners, customs, 
beliefs and prevailing ideas — none of which, in a human view, 
appear suitable pabulum for the mental and moral development 
of a prophet of the Lord. 

The Chaldeans were deeply religious; their Bel worship was 
part and parcel of every thought and act of their lives. This is 
indicated by the size of their temples ; the devices of their seals 
and signets; the remains of their painting and sculpture; the 
names of their children ; even by their banquets, where they sang 
the praises of their gods over their wine cups. 

The life of Daniel at Babylon was initiated by a change of his 
Hebrew name to one compounded with that of Bel, the ruling 


452 


DANIEL. 


divinity of Chaldea. Doubtless the high soul of the Jewish boy 
rebelled sorely against this imposition. 

One of the principal themes of instruction at Babylon would be 
the Assyrian religion. Next after this would come the national 
morals. 

Nicolas, of Damascus, says that the Babylonians especially 
cultivated two virtues — honesty and calmness ; both of these would 
commend themselves to Daniel, and we see the fruits of an early 
training in them, in his after life. 

In astronomy, the Chaldeans were the teachers of the world ; 
and to this grand science Daniel doubtless devoted much of his 
time. We can imagine the beautiful Hebrew youth standing 
among the ancient sages on the summit of the mighty tower of 
Bel, watching the evolutions of the planets in the midnight sky, 
and tracing the constellations. Each star he is told has its influ- 
ence on human destiny ; each one possesses some strange power 
upon our mortal life; the Heavens are divided into houses; the 
instant of an individual’s birth was a theme; and from the starry 
house, and its planet lord, a man’s life was to be forecast. 

Daniel listens submissively, but there is a song in his heart — the 
song whose glorious cadences echoed once through the temple. 
“ When I consider the heavens the work of thy fingers, the moon 
and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou 
art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou visitest him?” 

David, watching his sheep on the Judean plain, grew in the 
knowledge of his God ; and the prisoner Daniel, on the Tower of 
Belus, shall use the lore of David as his armor against the 
enchantments of a false faith. “ The Heavens declare the glory 
of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork : day unto 
day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge.” 
And then Daniel remembers the law of the Lord, which is per- 
fect, sure, and holy. “ Praise him, ye sun and moon : praise him, 


DANIEL. 


453 


all ye stars of light. Fire and hail, snow and vapour, stormy 
wind, fulfilling his word.” 

Thus Daniel kept his heart while he was the pupil of the 
priests of Belus. “ These priests,” says Diodorus Siculus, “ were 
devoted to the pursuit of learning. They guarded the temple, 
served the gods, studied the skies, read omens, explained visions ; 
and no man questioned of their wisdom.” 

We see from the narrative in the Scripture, that Daniel was 
made a member of one of the Babylonish sacred orders, and here 
the ignorance of unbelievers has raised a loud outcry. A Jew 
become a member of the Chaldaic priesthood ! Impossible. The 
story is a romance ! 

Not so. In Babylon, as in Persia and Egypt, there was a 
peculiar class of priestly philosophers to which foreigners were 
admitted, if learned enough to attain the highest privileges. A 
body at once sacerdotal and learned, they studied history, astron- 
omy, chronology, grammar and law; but chiefly astrology. 

For admission to this order, Daniel was three years in training, 
that he might stand an accomplished astrologer before the king. 

Beauty, however, was a qualification almost as necessary to a 
Chaldean courtier as learning; therefore, the teachers of Daniel 
devoted themselves to his physical training as assiduously as to 
his mental culture. 

The diet of the Babylonian court was luxurious : fruit, milk, 
vegetables; fish, game and choice meats, with unlimited quanti- 
ties of wine, were daily served at the king’s board ; and from 
thence a portion was sent to the captive pupils of the priests, that 
they might grow “ fat and fair,” and that their “ countenances 
might be in good liking.” 

Daniel, however, knew that idolatrous ceremonies and conse- 
crations w r ere supposed to have made the king’s food more nutri- 
tious ; and also that there would be mingled with it such food as 


454 


DANIEL. 


was unclean to a Hebrew, and especially that the flesh would 
have been killed in a manner to render it impure to an observer 
of Mosaic law. 

These matters he laid before his companions, and with wonder- 
ful self-denial they resolved to abstain from royal dainties, and 
eat such common food and fruit as was beneath the pampered 
appetites of Chaldean rioters. 

Melzar was tutor of these four Hebrew lads, and the affection 
which they excited in his heart, together with the earnestness, 
piety, and discretion of their appeal to him, show us these lads as 
already singularly mature and attractive. 

A blessing followed their pious resolve : they were favored with 
unusual health of body and cheerfulness' of heart : quiet con- 
sciences shone in the beauty of their faces, and with untroubled 
spirits and untainted blood, their minds were left free and active, 
so that, at the end of three years, the four Jews stood peerless 
before the king ; wiser than all their teachers, brave, ready, acute, 
yet gracious and persuasive; “ and in all matters of wisdom and 
understanding that the king inquired of them, he found them ten 
times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in 
his realm.” 

Daniel entered upon his life as a courtier after three years of 
captivity. All the temptations and false teachings of these years 
had in no wise sullied the simplicity and purity of his spirit. 
His calmness in danger is shown in his gentle and reasonable re- 
monstrance with Arioch, captain of the guard, who at the order of 
a furious despot, had come to behead him. His winning elo- 
quence stays the hand of the executioner, and gains a reprieve 
from Nebuchadnezzar. His prayerful faith, his entire dependence 
upon the God of his fathers, are exhibited in his consultation with 
his three comrades, and the night of prayer that ensues. His as- 
cription of praise to God, when his supplications are answered, is 
evidence of the most ardent piety. 


DANIEL. 


455 


Thus the youthful exile entered upon the trying duties of his 
manhood, eminent in holiness. Of his religion he made no secret. 
He says to the king plainly, “ There is a God in heaven that re- 
vealeth secrets and maketh known to king Nebuchadnezzar what 
shall be in the latter days.” This, his God, he elevates at once 
over Belus and his mouthpieces and servants, the magicians and 
astrologers. And as he immediately gives proof of the supremacy of 
the God whom he adores, Nebuchadnezzar accepts it humbly. 

He preaches the coming dominion of the God of heaven, who 
shall reign over the conquered empires of the earth; and preaches 
it with such eloquence, simplicity and sincerity, that the truth is 
fully impressed upon the mind of the king. There is no ring of 
the coward in the brave words : 

“ And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set 
up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed : and the kingdom 
shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and 
consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.” 

Never was a courtier so honored in the beginning of his career 
as this Daniel ; for, impressed with his divine wisdom, Nebu- 
chadnezzar, the greatest potentate of the earth, “fell upon his face 
and worshipped Daniel, and commanded that they should offer an 
ablation and sweet odors unto him.” Treated thus as a god, 
Daniel did not for one moment lose his sobriety, humility and 
frankness as a man ; and he had instant need of every virtue 
which humanity can possess, for the king loaded him with gifts, 
and then made him ruler over the royal province of Babylon, and 
chief of the governors of the Magi. Firm in his friendships, 
Daniel took but one advantage of this bountiful kindness of the 
king; he remembered the graces and learning of his three dear 
friends, and petitioned for their advancement. Nebuchadnezzar 
at once gave them lofty positions in the state, but kept Daniel in 
his palace, to counsel him in every emergency. 


4 56 


DANIEL. 


We find that Daniel passed much of his time at Susa, or 
Shushan, a royal city, where was a favorite palace of the kings 
of Babylon ; and lie may have been administering the affairs of 
that part of the kingdom, at the time of the famous trial of the 
integrity of the three Hebrew princes, who would not obey king 
Nebuchadnezzar, “ to worship the golden image which he had set 
up.” 

The friendship of Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar seems to have 
been very sincere ; it is especially shown in the interpretation of 
the king’s sadly significant dream of the fallen forest tree. 

This dream occurred probably within the last twelve years of 
Nebuchadnezzar’s life. The reign of Nebuchadnezzar lasted 
forty-four years. Daniel was carried into captivity during the 
first or second year of Nebuchadnezzar. lie seems to have been 
absent from Babylon, doubtless acting as governor or viceroy for 
his king, when that fatal dream disturbed the royal peace, and 
Daniel, the gifted, was called to relieve his sovereign’s perplexity. 
During this long period of his public life, Daniel had grown in 
grace and holiness, for Ezekiel, whose captivity and prophecy 
occurred within this time, mentions him twice as conspicuous for 
purity and knowledge; setting him with Noali and Job, those 
great types of godly living, and favorites of Heaven. “ Though 
these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should 
deliver but their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord.” 

The scene when Nebuchadnezzar narrates his dream is one of 
surpassing interest. The two friends, the mighty king and his 
chief counsellor, are alone. When the vision has been told, excess 
of grief keeps Daniel for one hour speechless. It is not fear that 
binds his tongue, as we shall soon see, but it is anguish of soul, 
that one whom he loves, and for much admires, has, by his sins, 
incurred the so heavy wrath of Heaven, that he must now unfold 
and presently witness this sore affliction. 


DANIEL. 


457 


The king, seeing his friend’s trouble, comforts and encourages 
him : “ Belteshazzar, let not the dream, nor the interpretation 
thereof, trouble thee.” “ My lord,” says the gracious Daniel, and 
the true love of the friend rings through the suavity of the cour- 
tier, “ let the dream be to them that hate thee, and the interpreta- 
tion thereof to thine enemies.” 

For more than forty years Daniel was in the court of Nebu- 
chadnezzar. At the death of that great monarch, the most 
troubled period of Daniel’s life began. Evil-Merodach, the son 
of Nebuchadnezzar, succeeded to the throne. There are various 
traditions of this unhappy prince. One account is, that during 
his father’s insanity, Evil-Merodach attempted to seize the govern- 
ment, and was cast into prison, where he contracted a friendship 
for Jehoiachin, which resulted in his delivering that king from his 
long captivity as soon as he had power to do so. There is also a 
tradition, that from intercourse with Jews and other strangers in 
his land, Evil-Merodach had begun to think lightly of his own 
religion, and despise the priests, whose hatred he aroused by cur- 
tailing their powers ancl privileges. The circumstance of his par- 
ticularly honoring Jehoiachin and making him his favorite com- 
panion, may have given rise to suspicions that he was departing 
from the ancient policy of the kingdom, and was giving prece- 
dence and authority to strangers instead of to his legitimate sub- 
jects. After a reign of two years, Evil-Merodach Avas deposed 
during a revolt headed by Nerigilisser his brother-in-law. 

This man had acquired popularity and prestige in three ways : 
he was the son-in-law of the famous Nebuchadnezzar, and, in 
Chaldea, princesses had royal rights, and not unfrequently came 
to the throne; he was an experienced warrior, and had conducted 
the siege of Jerusalem, which is mentioned by Jeremiah as begin- 
ning in the ninth year of Zedekiah. He had also gained influence 
as a Rab-Mag, which is chief of the magicians. 


458 


DANIEL. 


This Nerigilisser reigned four years, and dying, left the empire 
to his son, Laborsoracus, a poor, unhappy boy, who paid with his 
life for his father’s usurpation of royal authority. This luckless 
creature reigned but nine months, and is said to have been put to 
death by torture. Thus, after a period of seventy years, the king- 
dom left the family of Nabopolasser. 

Nabonadius now succeeded to the throne ; he was a conspirator, 
who had also been Rab-Mag, and bricks are now found among 
Babylonian ruins where this title is appended to his name. 
There is reason to suppose that he married a daughter of Nebu- 
chadnezzar, very likely the widow of Nerigilisser and mother 
of the murdered boy king. 

Thus Daniel saw the reign of five Babylonian sovereigns, the 
last four following one another in quick succession, amid the 
uproar of conspiracies and revolts. 

For many years the foes of the Bible made a grand difficulty of 
the story of Belshazzar and his reign in Babylon. The monu- 
ments, they cried, the bricks, the stamped cylinders, mention 
no such king, and the history of his rioting and death was a gross 
fabrication to exalt the name of Daniel. 

The researches of Rawlinson gloriously vindicated the statements 
of the Scriptures. The bricks and cylinders after a burial of cen- 
turies came forth from their graves, to testify against those who 
appealed to them to destroy the truth of God. These exhumed 
records of the Chaldeans show that Nabonadius had by his wife — 
probably the daughter of Nebuchadnezzar — a son Belshazzar, or 
Bil-shar-uzzar, who was therefore by his mother’s side a grandson 
of Nebuchadnezzar. This prince, Nabonadius early associated 
with himself in the government; gave him the title of king, and 
established him at Babylon, with his mother for his. chief adviser. 

While this young, inexperienced and dissolute prince was in 
possession of royal authority at Babylon, Cyrus came to besiege the 


DANIEL. 


459 


city. Nabonadius hastening to the rescue of his son and capital, 
was defeated by the Persian army, and forced to retire to Borsippa. 

AVe have now reached the time of Belshazzar’s feast, and the 
return of Daniel to the story of the kingdom. Belshazzar, aided 
by the counsels of his mother, and experienced ministers of State, 
and supported by a numerous and well-disciplined army, for a long 
time defied the besiegers. The strength of Babylon seemed im- 
pregnable, its resources inexhaustible; through all the city the 
tide of life and its ordinary avocations flowed on, careless of the 
presence of the mighty host at the gates. 

Since the death of Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel, already past middle 
life, had apparently retired to a private station. The ribald con- 
spirators, and jealous magicians who seized the kingdom saw no- 
thing desirable in that grand life which, bent on duty only, pursued 
its steady way, 

“ Like some calm planet shining thro’ the night.” 

Bemoved from the distractions of the court, Daniel now doubt- 
less was living the happiest part of his life. Ambitious men would 
have fretted over loss of power and honor ; worldly men would 
have looked back with longing to those “ flesh-pots of Egypt,” 
the glitter, luxury and mirth of the palace. Daniel, dismissed by 
earthly sovereigns, devoted himself with renewed ardor to waiting 
upon the King of kings. The neglected courtier of Babylon be- 
came more than ever the courtier of the skies ; he who once gov- 
erned the royal province, and made laws for “ the mingled people,” 
now gave himself to strengthening the hands of the exiled Israelites ; 
animating their faith ; and reviving their love for Zion, city of 
God, Jerusalem the joy of the whole earth. Dearest and brightest 
memory of Daniel’s life was the city of David ; the glorious temple 
of Solomon, now fallen in ruins ; the towers and bulwarks, the 
porches and gardens, the groves and houses of cedar, which orna- 


4G0 


DANIEL. 


merited the home of his fathers ; and whose glory had been the 
theme on which their lips had best loved to dwell. 

The splendors of Babylon, her imperial purple, crimson and 
gold, had never outvied the lovely radiance of those scenes of 
childhood. The old man remembered Jerusalem, and as he re- 
called each walk and way, he heard again the sound of the silver 
trumpets, and the glad chorus of singing priests ; he heard the 
prayers, saw the smoke of the daily sacrifice ; saw the fragrant 
clouds of incense, the symbolical robes, and listened to the voice 
of benediction. He heard the swelling of the Songs of Degrees, 
and saw the multitudes thronging to the Holy City for the 
festivals. 

Oh happy days which should come again to those young men 
and children of Judah who now dwelt in Babylon ; never to him 
the exiled prophet, the saintly courtier, who had growp old and 
gray in his captivity. He went among his people infusing his 
own loving, faithful spirit, wherever he spoke of the approaching 
restoration ; he instructed them to pray looking to Jerusalem, as 
Solomon had taught at the dedication of the Temple. The great 
mind which had administered the affairs of millions, now was oc- 
cupied in cultivating piety and patriotism in his countrymen. The 
prophecies of release from captivity after seventy years ; of the 
sudden surprise and fall of Babylon, and of Cyrus as a deliverer, 
were kept before the Jews by Daniel. 

For the most part, the Jews were well treated in Babylon ; many 
of them amassed wealth, and were advanced to high positions. 
But in the heart of the Jew religion and patriotism were closely 
wedded ; Zion was a spot so sacred that no other could be like it ; 
there the blessing was to descend on the nation ; there prayer was 
especially heard ; there shone the glory of God ; there only the 
Jew could worship in the manner of his fathers. From all those 
captives by the Euphrates went up the voice of lamentation : 


DANIEL. 


461 


“ May tliig right hand, whose skill 
Can wake the harp at will, 

And bid the listeners’ joys or griefs in light or darkness come, 

Forget its godlike power, 

If for one brief dark hour, 

My heart forgets Jerusalem, fallen city of my home ! ” 

And now for two years, Cyrus the spn of prophecy, whom God 
had called as his i( Shepherd ” more than a century and a half be- 
fore his birth, had been investing the city Babylon, and storming 
her frowning walls. 

Grown reckless in his confidence, Belshazzar remitted his watch- 
fulness and gave himself to revelry. 

A fatal night came, in which he made a feast to a thousand of 
his lords. “ The king and his princes, his wives and his concu- 
bines, ^ are enumerated as drinking together at this feast. “ They 
drank wine and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, 
of iron, of wood, and of stone.” 

All this is in strict accordance with what we learn elsewhere of 
Assyrian customs. Ahasuerus (Xerxes I.) made a feast for all 
his nobles and princes, which lasted one hundred and eighty days ; 
at the conclusion of which he feasted all the citizens of Susa for 
seven days. 

It was the custom at feasts to celebrate the praises of the gods 
in songs, as they drank their wine. The Babylonians were greatly 
given to excess in drinking ; in banquet halls elegantly furnished 
they reclined on world-famous carpets ; were clad in gorgeous gar- 
ments of silk, linen, woolen and cloth of gold ; they wore jewels 
and trinkets without number ; shone in all the dyes of the rain- 
bow ; and to the sound of music, which accompanied every feast, 
they rioted for hours. Ctesias says that one nobleman entertained 
his guests with the songs of one hundred and fifty women who 
sang in chorus. At these Assyrian feasts women were always pre- 
sent, and instead of being a check upon the confusion, they drank 


462 


DANIEL. 


as deeply as their companions, and added to the wild abandonment 
of the Bacchanal. 

In the midst of such a scene, Belshazzar saw upon the opposite 
wall the hand of an uninvited guest, tracing words that none could 
read. Across the brilliant paintings on the wall ran lines of livid 
light, a ghostly presage of doom. Above the din of revelry rang 
the wild cry of the frantic king, calling for his magicians, astrolo- 
gers and soothsayers. Before that terrible inscription they stood 
dumb ; and now an awful silence filled the banquet room, and 
pallid faces were lifted toward the writing on the wall. 

There was one person in the palace who had held aloof from 
the ribald and inauspicious glee of that night. 

The queen-mother, in her own apartment, brooded over memo- 
ries of the past, and nursed fears for the future. In her early 
days she had seen much of Daniel, her royal father’s friend. She 
had heard of the Lord God of Israel, whose word never fails, and 
she knew what his prophets had spoken of the fate of Babylon. 
She remembered that after the fall of the “Head of Gold,” 
another inferior kingdom should arise in its stead, and now the 
mighty fabric of Chaldean power seemed hastening to decay. 

In the midst of her anxious musing comes to her word of the 
supernatural appearance in the hall of feasting. A spectral hand, 
with a pen dipped in fire, writes ceaselessly four words, that none 
can read. The wise men are helpless ; the courtiers are aghast ; 
the wives and the concubines are phrensiecl with terror; the king 
trembles like an aspen, cannot rise from his couch, and with 
pallid lips cries out for some one to interpret the mystery. 

At once the royal mother hastens to her son. With tenderness 

she reassures him; she has maternal love for this base, riotous 

\ 

youth, the victim of her own godless training: “ O king, live for- 
ever. There is a man in thy kingdom in whom is the spirit of 
the holy gods . . . and in the days of thy father, light and under- 


DANIEL. 


463 


standing and wisdom, like the wisdom of the gods, was found in 
him.” 

She, therefore, sends messengers to the humble home of the 
ex-courtier, and with haste they bring him before the atfrighted 
king. 

Belshazzar had evidently never met Daniel. He looks at the 
old man, clad in a plain Jewish garb, and wonders if this is he 
who ruled provinces; swayed the counsels of Nebuchadnezzar; 
governed the Magi, and had an oblation offered unto him as if he 
were a god. 

“Art thou,” he cries, “ that Daniel which art of the children 
of the captivity of Judah, whom the king, my father, brought out 
of Jewry? I have heard of thee, that the spirit of the gods is in 
thee.” 

Belshazzar knows of but one ruling motive for the human soul 
— self-interest. He endeavors to excite this in Daniel, that he 
may serve him well. Pie details his perplexities, and finally adds : 
“ Now if thou canst read the writing, and make known to me the 
interpretation thereof, thou shalt be clothed in scarlet, and have a 
chain of gold about thy neck, and shalt be third ruler in the 
kingdom.” 

Daniel had loved and revered Nebuchadnezzar, his benefactor 
and friend, who had had some lofty virtues ; this effete Belshazzar, 
this drunken debauched viceroy of Nabonadius, who has this very 
night offered gross and deliberate insult to the King of Heaven, 
in that he has taken the holy vessels of the ravished Temple of 
Jerusalem, and given them to harlots, that in them they may 
drink to Belus and Ashtoreth, Daniel’s soul abhors. He replies, 
with lofty calmness : “ Let thy gifts be to thyself, and thy rewards 
to another.” 

Daniel knows well that when bad men reign, “ the post of 
honor is a private station.” 


464 


DANIEL. 


Standing before that eager, gorgeous, fearful throng, the thou- 
sand lords, the women of the harem, the myriads of servants, and 
before the quailing, awe struck king, Daniel rehearses Nebuchad- 
nezzar’s sin and fall. He then reproaches Belshazzar for his 
crimes, culminating in this defilement of the holy utensils of the 
house of God. 

Then turning to the wall, he sees the writing hand withdrawn, 
and the four weighty words left, that contain the doom of Babylon. 

In a profound hush, Daniel read the message from on High. 
Belshazzar was weighed, and found wanting; his kingdom was 
already divided, and given to the Medes and Persians. 

Already obsequious slaves had brought the ordered reward. 
They wrapped about Daniel the scarlet robe, hung upon his neck 
the golden insignia of office, and leading him forth from the 
palace, proclaimed him third ruler in the kingdom. 

An empty honor — for already the treacherous river had betrayed 
its trust ; a tide of human life flowed through its bed ; the armed 
heels of Medes and Persians rang on the paved ways; their steel- 
cased forms climbed the waterside stairs, and pressed a silent and 
triumphant host toward that banquet house, where they would 
pour out Babylonian blood more freely than wine had flowed into 
the golden cups sacred to Judah’s God. 

Morning dawned. The Mother of Kingdoms, the Glory of the 
Chaldees, had changed rulers. Belshazzar was dead ; his people 
were conquered ; his courtiers were banished ; his servants owned 
another lord. Darius, the ally and satrap of Cyrus, reigned on 
the throne of Nabopolassar. 

Perhaps the fame of Daniel had spread through Media and 
Persia; perhaps the strange story of that night of doom reached 
the new monarch’s ears; perhaps the queen-mother, who had 
remembered Daniel, was taken into the confidence of Darius, and 
spoke to him of her great father’s favorite friend. 


DANIEL. 


465 


However this may be, Darius at once set about remodelling his 
kingdom, and Daniel was suddenly restored to all his former 
glory ; becoming second ruler in the kingdom. 

Darius set over his new domain one hundred and twenty 
princes ; over these three presidents ; and of these presidents, 
Daniel was first. “This Daniel was preferred above the presi- 
dents and princes, because an excellent spirit was in him ; and the 
king thought to set him over the whole realm.” 

A child, in captivity and temptation, Daniel had been firm and 
pious; a man in the allurements of a court, flattered, wealthy, 
surrounded with heathenism and immorality, he had been diligent 
in business; humble before God; brave for truth, and pure in 
life. Cast suddenly from wealth to poverty, from splendor to 
obscurity, from honor to neglect, Daniel pursued the even tenor 
of his way ; w^as righteous in the eyes of his Maker ; stood apart 
from sin ; was content ; was simple in manner, and religious in 
practice, neither desiring nor accepting rewards. 

Now swept from this quiet nook, where his virtues had- thrived 
in secret, he is carried at once to the very pinnacle of powder. 
The heart of the king was set on him ; he lived in the sunshine 
of royal favor ; a hundred and twenty provinces took their law 
from his lips ; he dwelt in the palace ; and those who would win 
favor with the monarch, must seek it through Daniel. 

In all this business care and royal display, he finds — as few 
men do — time to be religious. He does, not hide his piety ; his 
is an unpopular religion, not the gorgeous worship of Bel, but the 
austere service of a captive nation ; the adoration of that Invisible 
One, whose children have languished in bondage these many years. 

AVonderful concession is this of his enemies ! Here is a public 
man, whose integrity and industry are such that his foes say of 
him : “ AYe shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, 
except we find it against him . concerning the law of his God ! ” 

30 


466 


DANIEL. 


\ 

Daniel knows the machinations of his foes. He has lived for 
God, now he is willing to die for Him. 

There are bccasions when concealment is a crime. Here is one 
of them : and Daniel, as is his wont, kneels three times a day 
with his face toward beloved and desolated Jerusalem, and cries 
to God for help in all his need. From this Supernal Source, the 
saintly courtier gained his wisdom, his benevolence, his probity, 
all which made him invaluable to the state. He knew that that 
open window about which enemies waited, was as the open 
mouths of hungry monsters, yawning to destroy him. 

Kneeling there, God was with him. Just as a little time 
after God was with him in that fearful den of lions, where 
he sat safely shadowed by the King of kings; and while 
Darius, the Mede, wept in his palace, and the sounds of mirth 
were hushed, Daniel, in peaceful contemplation, had foretaste 
of the time when none shall hurt or destroy in all God’s holy 
mountain. 

Thus tried by persecution, Daniel was steadfast still, and after 
this the Scripture tells us he prospered until the reign of Cyrus. 
Thus was Daniel in Babylonia under seven kings, maintaining 
through every strange change in his circumstances an unvarying 
righteousness of walk and conversation. 

Most honored of courtiers, he was als6 one of God’s great 
triumvirate of typical holy men ; and as a prophet united the 
gifts of his cotemporaries in the Old Testament, with the Apoca- 
lyptic visions of John, the latest seer. 

The first vision which this prophet records, came to him in his 
retirement, during the first year of Belshazzar ; the revelation 
was a mighty bridge of light, built from the days of Daniel, spring- 
ing with a glorious arch the stream of time, and completing its 
span with the glory which shall be revealed when the Son of Man 
shall have come into his kingdom. . 


DANIEL. 


467 


In the third year of Belshazzar’s reign in Babylon, Daniel 
seems to have been for a time at Susa, perhaps engaged in some 
business for king Nabonadius, Belshazzar’s father. Here he had 
another vision, in which events are set forth with such clearness 
and precision that they appear rather as a history of what is past 
than a prophecy of the future. 

In the first year of “ Darius the Mede,” (Cyaxares II.,) Daniel 
tells us that he set himself to a careful study of the books of Jere- 
miah with a view to ascertain the length of the captivity, and the 
“time of the end.” This study he accompanied with humiliation, 
fasting and prayer; making confession for himself and for his 
people, and beseeching the favor of God. 

In Daniel’s prayerfulness was his strength. We see him praying 
in prosperity and in adversity ; in joy and in danger ; in doubt 
and in the midst of business. He prays when the decree has 
gone forth to slay him ; in the den of lions ; in the palace ; about 
the king’s business ; in the midst of siege, and in the silence of the 
night. 

His mission to Darius is not the ordinary mission of courtiers, 
he stood before the king “ to confirm and to strengthen him.” 
This was his idea of his office to Nebuchadnezzar also, and to Cyrus, 
mighty despots, before whom a world trembled. He showed them 
the right way, upheld the law of his Lord, and dared exhort them, 
“ Break off thy sins by righteousness.” Such was his influence 
that he made these monarchs preachers of holiness in their domi- 
nions. Nebuchadnezzar did public honor to the “ King of 
heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment.” . 
Darius made a decree that, “in every dominion of my kingdom, 
men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel ; for He is the 
Living God, and steadfast forever.” 

Daniel never seemed distressed by any of his own varied for- 
tunes, but for the afflictions of his nation he fasted and wept ; his 


468 


DANIEL. 


countenance was changed as he foresaw their final dispersion. 
“ He fainted and was sick,” as he beheld afar off the cruelties 
practised by Antiochus Epiphanes. The last recorded vision of 
Daniel is in the third year of Cyrus. Two years before this had 
gone forth the famous decree for the return of the Jews and the 
rebuilding of the city and Temple. 

At this time Daniel must have been nearly ninety years old : 
too aged to undertake the long journey across the plains from Eu- 
phrates to Judea, and doubtless also more needed by his people 
as their friend in power, their advocate beside the king, than as 
their companion on the way to Jerusalem. 

The city of Zion to him should be only a memory, like his 
mother’s face, vanished with those innocent delights of childhood, 
before he became a stranger in Chaldea. But what of this? A 
voice celestial had sounded in his ears, “ O man, greatly beloved, 
fear not : peace be to thee ; be strong, yea, be strong.” 

Then had he taken heart of grace and made answer : u Let my 
Lord speak ; for thou hast strengthened me.” 

' “ Blessed is he that waiteth,” had the Lord said to Daniel ; 
“ but go thy way, till the end be ; for thou shalt rest and stand 
in thy lot at the end of the days.”. 

After a life so long and so busy, rest was sweet; he found 
it in Assyrian soil, but he had reached the true Mount Zion, 
the glorious Land, the City of the Living, the Jerusalem whose 
Temple is the Lord her God. 

The Life of Daniel shows us that there is no situation, 
whether lofty or lowly, where it is impossible for men to main- 
tain the fear and service of their God. Daniel, during his 
long life, filled almost every possible position, a prisoner, a prime 
minister, a private citizen, a prophet ; and in all he kept unsul- 
lied his Christian character, and shed abroad the light of a pure 
and devout spirit. 


DANIEL. 


469 


There is nigh to every man a fountain of help and strength 
sufficient to his need ; there is ever open a hearing ear, and out- 
stretched a guiding hand, for all the sons of men in life’s tor- 
tuous way ; and, after the tumult, toil and pain, come to the 
trusting, patient spirit, the everlasting rejoicing, the rest in the 
presence of the King of Glory. 


THE PATRIOTISM OF RELIGION. 


history of Nehemiah must begin with a glance at the 
swish fortunes from the days of Daniel. The first year 
' the reign of Cyrus at Babylon was signalized by that 
eat act for which God had especially called him to the 
kingdom — the Restoration of the Jews. 

Agreeably to its usual policy, the Chaldean nation had so w T ell 
treated the captive people, that only a remnant of the great tribe 
of Judah returned to desolated Jerusalem. This remnant was un- 
doubtedly the very flower of Israel, the most pious, patriotic and 
enlightened part of the exiles. There still remained in Assyria 
many noble families of Jews, who maintained their own worship ; 
and felt themselves a part of Jewry rather than of Chaldea ; even 
while voluntarily abiding in a foreign land. The probity, learn- 
ing and business tact of these men, caused them to be advanced to 
positions of high honor under the Persian government, and they 
used their influence ever in behalf of that brave band, who led the 
forlorn hope of Israel in re-establishing the nationality in the 
teeth of tremendous difficulties and opposition. 

Cyrus lived for seven years after the restoration, and was suc- 
ceeded by his son, Cambyses. 

Several of the Persian rulers were called by the Jews Ar- 
taxerxes, a title of honor, meaning great king : many kings were 
470 



NEHEMIAH. 


471 


also named by them, Ahasuerus. In Ezra the fourth chapter and 
sixth verse, an Ahasuerus is mentioned who is doubtless Cam- 
byses, the weak and wicked successor of the mighty Cyrus. The 
reign of this Cambyses lasted seven years. Amid the tumult 
and anarchy occasioned by his outrageous despotism, it was very 
easy for the enemies of the Jews to obtain a reversal of the edicts 
of Cyrus ; and thus the building of the Temple was stopped, and 
the city was left without walls. 

Cambyses was succeeded by the usurper Smerdis the Magian, 
who endeavored to personate Smerdis, the son of Cyrus, who had 
been privately murdered. This Magian is called Artaxerxes in 
Ezra, fourth chapter and seventh verse. His reign lasted only 
eight months, but during this time the active foes of Israel ob- 
tained from him a decree against the work at Jerusalem, which 
still further embarrassed and discouraged the returned people. 

The treachery of Smerdis having been discovered, he was assas- 
sinated, and Darias, the son of Hystaspes, was made king. 

Darius was a disciple of Zoroaster, the reformer of the Magian 
religion. The school of Zoroaster had imbibed many of its opinions 
from the Jewish captives. Hystaspes, the father of Darius, had 
been a favored officer of King Cyrus, and could not possibly have 
failed to know Daniel, the chief minister of state, and archimagus, 
or governor of the Magians. Indeed, the wisdom of Daniel had 
passed into such high repute that, as we see from Ezekiel, it be- 
came a proverb, “ Art thou wiser than Daniel ? ” 

To the office of archimagus, Hystaspes himself succeeded on 
the coronation of his son. 

Thus Darius, by early associations, by religious preferences, and 
by his just desire to emulate the great Cyrus, was disposed to 
favor the Jews. 

The prophets Haggai and Zechariah encouraged the leaders of 
the people to resume their work at the Holy City, as God had raised 


472 


NEHEMIAH. 


them up a friend in the new sovereign. The leaders of the Resto- 
ration had been Zerubbabel, as civil ruler, and Jeshua as High 
Priest. The people had now been about fifteen years struggling 
to rebuild their homes. 

An appeal against the Jews, made to Darius, caused him to 
search the records of the kingdom, and find the edicts of Cyrus ; 
animated by the example of that benevolent ruler, Darius reproved 
the hostility of Tatnai and his confreres ; and decreed to the Jews 
not only liberty to rebuild, but money, cattle, timber, and any as- 
sistance which they might need. 

The book of Ezra is not a continuqus history. Between chap- 
ters sixth and seventh, there is a hiatus of probably fifty-six years. 
This period begins with the seventh year of Darius, and reaches 
to the seventh year of his grandson, Artaxerxes Longimanus. 

During this time in Persia had reigned Xerxes, the son of 
Darius, who is called Ahasuerus in the book of Esther. Some 
have considered Artaxerxes Longimanus to be this Ahasuerus, 
but the weight of testimony is in favor of Xerxes, as the king 
who divorced Vashti, and married Esther. 

In this fifty-six years, Zerubbabel and Jeshua had died at Jeru- 
salem ; many, even of the Levites, had married strange wives ; 
public order relaxed ; the services of the sanctuary fell into dis- 
repute ; while misery and humiliation were the portion of the disor- 
ganized people. In the seventh year of Artaxerxes Longimanus, 
the son of Xerxes the Great, the Lord stirred up Ezra the scribe, 
of the house of Levi, to go to the aid of his brethren. Though 
born in Assyria, Ezra was a Jew in heart; he was scrupulously 
exact in the performance of Mosaic law, garnered at Zion the 
dearest hopes of his heart, and like all the sons of the faith, for 
more than three thousand years, looked “ for the consolation of 
Israel.” 

Obtaining royal consent to go to Judea and strengthen his 


NEHEMIAH. 


473 


brethren, Ezra, by means of a permissive decree, collected a host 
of Jews, principally of the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and Levi, 
to return and establish themselves in the dwellings of their fore- 
fathers. Artaxerxes, also, with his court, gave a liberal present 
of gold and silver to Ezra, and allowed him to invite gifts from 
all the province of Babylon. The departing Israelites were per- 
mitted to carry with them all their property ; the descendants of 
Levi were decreed to be free from taxation, and the provinces be- 
yond the Euphrates were ordered to pay to Ezra a tribute of sil- 
ver, wheat, oil, wine and salt. The conclusion of this generous 
edict is notable : “ Whatsoever is commanded by the God of 
heaven, let it be diligently done for the house of the God of 
heaven ; for why should there be wrath against the realm of the 
king and his sons ? ” 

Ezra was a descendant of that Hilkiah, who was High Priest 
in the reign of good Josiah. The character of the scribe is one 
of great beauty ; his enthusiasm for his religion, and for the land 
of his fathers, which leads him to abandon court favor and pros- 
pect of preferment, and to devote himself to building up the im- 
poverished cities of Israel, an enthusiasm which could fire the 
souls of so many of his' countrymen, and cause them to cast in 
their lot with his, gives us a fine picture of the Jew of the resto- 
ration. His high place in the court and in the favor of the 
monarch, and the entire confidence placed in his character, are 
evinced by the liberal donations entrusted to him. 

His humility appears in his earnest ascription of praise : 
“ Blessed be the Lord God of our fathers, which hath put such a 
'thing into the king’s heart.” 

His faith is shown in his simple statement that, at the river 
Ahava he proclaimed a fast, to seek protection from the Lord 
during the journey to Jerusalem; “For,” he says, “I was 
ashamed to require of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen 


474 


NEHEMIAH. 


to help us against the enemy in the way ; for we had spoken to 
the king, saying, The hand of our God is upon all them for good 
that seek him.” Thus was Ezra zealous for the honor of his 
Lord, and his confidence in the heavenly protection was not dis- 
appointed. 

Ezra undertook the task of renovating the religious life of his 
people. He was not a reformer content with clipping off little 
twigs of error and letting radical wrongs alone. He set himself 
at the roots of iniquity among the Jews, and made himself an 
example of thorough work, for all reformers yet to come. 

He was however simply a religious ruler ; the Jews had no one 
to organize their state ; no one to combat the public enemy, no one 
to administer civil laws, or keep them in good odor with their 
Persian rulers. 

We have no account of the duration of Ezra’s work at Jeru- 
salem, nor of the time and place of his death. It is probable that 
he died during the first absence in Susa of Nehemiah, who returned 
to Artaxerxes after twelve years. In that time Ezra had done a 
great work, in turning the hearts of the people to the Lord ; in 
reforming abuses, and in preparing a way for the energetic admin- 
istration of the Tirshatha. 

Among those Jews yet remaining in Assyria, was the family 
of Hachaliah, a man of Judah. He had been prospered in the 
country of his sojourn, and in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes 
Longimanus, Nehemiah, the son of Hachaliah, stood before the 
king as his cup-bearer, and favorite courtier. 

In the character of Artaxerxes Longimanus, distinguished in 
history as a benevolent, just and discreet sovereign, we see traces 
of the bountiful influence of Esther and Mordecai. Artaxerxes 
was ever a friend of the Jews, and evidently a respecter of the God 
of Israel. 

In the twentieth year of this king, certain Jews from Jerusalem 
visited Susa, at that time honored by the royal abode. 


NEHEMIAH. 


475 


One of these was Hanani, a kinsman of Nehemiah. 

These men called upon the cup-bearer, and he at once ques- 
tioned them closely upon the state of affairs in Palestine, and the 
prosperity of the Jews. 

The travellers had ill news to tell. “ The remnant,” said they, 
“ that are left of the captivity are in sore affliction ,and reproach. 
The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and the gates are burned 
with fire.” 

With their capital thus defenceless, in a hostile neighborhood, 
the Jews were in a sorry case. 

Nehemiah was a wise statesman, as well as a favored courtier ; 
and he perceived at once that the hope of his people was in fortifi- 
cation. 

It is noticeable that the decrees of Cyrus, Darius, and Artax- 
erxes had had reference to rebuilding the Temple, returning the 
Jews to their own land, and to their olden religion ; but had given 
no liberty to do what was, in the circumstances, especially impor- 
tant, namely, to build the city walls. The people needed 
headquarters, a rallying point, a strongly fortified capital, looking 
down upon and guarding their vineyards, olive orchards and 
wheat fields. 

Over the picture of the desolation of his fatherland, the heart 
of Nehemiah grew sick. 

Religion is always patriotic, as it is always filial. Religion is 
the nurse of the noblest emotions of the human soul — and of these 
patriotism is one. The good man’s father is God, his home is 
Heaven ; of these his earthly parent and his earthly home are pre- 
cious types ; they are the stepping-stones whereon he climbs to the 
unseen. 

The word of God carefully nourishes filial piety, and in each 
heart God plants the emotion, which his law is to foster as with 
sunshine and shower ; so also is patriotism set in the soul, and 


476 


, NEHEMIAH. 


precept and example are given in Scripture, to bring the generous 
impulse to a noble growth. Subordination to just authority ; the 
upholding of righteous laws ; the regarding of God as the Chief 
over nations, and the spirit of self-sacrifice, which looks first to 
the greatest good of the many, are .urged upon us in Holy Writ. 

Especially was the Jew called to be patriotic, because when his 
land was formally bestowed on Abraham, the father of the race, 
the promise of Messiah among his sons was also given, and the 
land, and the coming Divine Prince, who was to be bom in it, 
were inseparably associated in the Jewish mind. Moreover, the 
one true religion — the ordained system of types and shadows pre- 
figuring the Redeeming Monarch — was planted at Jerusalem; 
there was the house of God ; there were festivals and fasts to be 
kept ; there offerings to be laid on the altar, and there vows t,Q be 
paid. The Jews’ patriotism and the Jews’ religion were as indis- 
solubly united in him as his physical life was wedded to the 
beatings of Ids heart. 

For four months Nehemiah considered the sad case of his 
people ; laid his plans, and prayed for a blessing upon them. 

During this time, a growing sadness, born of sympathy with 
suffering brethren, of high resolve, and of secret anxieties, had 
subdued Nehemiah’s countenance. 

This change in his cup-bearer called the attention of the king ; 
and after waiting for some time for the sadness to pass away, and 
seeing it only deepen, Artaxerxes kindly inquired the reason of 
his trouble. 

Now as royalty is courteously supposed never to die, and never 
to do wrong, so it is supposed never to know that it holds its state 
in a weary and painful world ; and human suffering was pro- 
hibited exhibition before kingly eyes. 

King Artaxerxes was sitting at a banquet, and Nehemiah was 
serving him with wine, when the amiable despot demanded: 


NEHEMIAH. 


477 


“Why is thy countenance sad, seeing thou art not sick? This is 
nothing else but sorrow of heart.” 

At these words, Nehemiah was “sore afraid.” He had been 
wont to be cheerful in the presence of his master; but now, know- 
ing the woes of his brethren, he could not rejoice; and the fate 
of his nation trembled upon his tongue. One unwise word, and 
all was lost ! 

With a swift-sent thought to Heaven for help, Nehemiah made 
honest answer : “ Why should not my countenance be sad, when 
the city, the place of my fathers’ sepulchres, lieth waste, and the 
gates thereof are consumed with fire ? ” 

There was something lying back of this speech, so the king to 
discover it asked : “ For what dost thou make request?” 

The decisive hour had come. For this the cup-bearer had 
planned and prayed for four long months. He now paused a 
moment, “ praying to the God of heaven.” 

Then he said, calmly : “ If it please the king, and if thy servant 
have found grace in thy sight, that thou wouldst send me to 
Judah, unto the city of my fathers’ sepulchres, that I may 
build it.” 

Not for the Temple did he make request, but for the city; for 
walls and towers and palaces. Nehemiah was a buildiug genius; 
on him was laid the burden of planting anew the commonwealth. 

He looked at the musing king anxiously; but caught an 
encouraging smile from a gracious presence by the monarch’s side 
— : the queen. 

Presently the king replied favorably, with the question : “For 
how long shall thy journey be? and when wilt thou return?” 

This plainly shows the friendship of the king; he cannot deny 
his favorite’s request ; he is unwilling to lose him altogether, and 
he has confidence in his promises of return. 

At this intimation of favor, Nehemiah gathered courage to ask 


478 


NEHEMIAH. 


for orders, enjoining the enemies of his nation to leave him unmo- 
lested ; and to request aid in timbers and building material, to 
restore the demolished walls. 

Artaxerxes conceded all; and making no delay, with a few 
friends Nehemiah set out for Jerusalem. He did not go unat- 
tended, for the king sent horsemen and captains with him, and 
probably, following the usual royal custom, gave him presents of 
gold and silver ; while it was the practice of the Jews in Assyria 
to send gifts to their struggling brethren, and the Tirshatha must 
now have been the bearer of such tribute. 

“ It grieved them (the Horonite and Ammonite) exceedingly, 
when they heard that a man was come to seek the welfare of the 
children of Israel/’ says the story. 

For three days .Nehemiah rested quietly at Jerusalem, giving 
audience to the chief men of the nation. Then, with a few friends, 
he set out by night to make a circuit of the city ; to view the 
broken walls, and lay his plans for building. Nehemiah rode; 
his companions were on foot. Under the bright shining of the 
Syrian moon, this small band of patriots went around their be- 
loved and unhappy city. 

“ I went out,” says Nehemiah, “ by the gate of the valley, even 
before the dragon well.” There is a singular fascination in this 
scene : we have the broken and ruined city, so long scorned by its 
foes ; the Temple, incomplete and lonely, rises in its midst, and 
about it are the homes of those who have preferred Jerusalem 
above their chief joy, and who have chosen rather to be door- 
keepers of this unfinished and impoverished Temple, than to amass 
wealth in Chaldea. 

The distant hills stand dark masses of shadow, their tops kissed * 
by white light; the plains lie in silver sheen, crossed by cones of 
darkness cast on them by the adjacent heights; the subduing 
moonlight lends a tender romantic beauty to fallen column, broken 































' 




















































V 






















NEHEMIAH. 


479 


arch, and shattered pilaster; ruins of fire and war; outside the 
broken ramparts wanders that little group, too sad to speak, 
beholding the desolation, and questioning if u the mercy of the 
Lord is clean gone forever.” 

They left the city by the gate of the valley on the eastern side ; 
before them lay the green slopes of the Mount of Olives ; beneath 
their feet descended the banks of the Kidron ; following the line 
of the wall southerly, they came to the fountain of the dragon, 
and rounding the southern point of Ophel, looking down upon 
the valley of Jehoshaphat, they sought the gate of the fountain, 
and then the king’s pool ; in each instance finding the ground so 
encumbered with debris that it was impossible for the beast Nehe- 
miah rode’to pass. In the stillness of the advancing night they 
turned north, and followed up the course of the brook Kidron, 
viewing the broken wall of the city of David, and the more recent 
fortifications of Jotham and Hezekiah. Alas ! gloom and decay 
were written everywhere. The sacred city, celebrated by her poet 
sons as the excellency of the earth, ttge joy of many generations, 
sat dreary and solitary ; haggard empress of a realm of desolation. 

“ Reft of thy sons, amid thy foes forlorn, 

Mourn, widowed queen ! forgotten Zion, mourn ! 

Is this thy place, sad city, this thy throne, 

Where the wild desert rears its craggy stone ; 

Where now thy pomp, which kings with envy viewed, 

Where now the might which all those kings subdued ? 

No martial myriads muster at thy gate ; 

No supplia-.t nations in thy temple wait.” 

Keturned from his melancholy tour of inspection, Nehemiah 
showed his friends his commission as Tirshatha, and the edict of 
the king, permitting the rebuilding of the city walls. This ani- 
mated their sorrowing hearts, and they cried, “Let us arise and 
build.” 

Nehemiah had to contend with foes without. “ Tobiah the 


480 


NEHEMIAH. 


Ammonite, and Sanballat the Horonite, and Gesliem the Arabian/' 
united against him, despised him, laughed him to scorn, and ac^ 
cused him of rebellion against the king. These enemies even 
attacked the builders, so that Nehemiah organized a defence ; and 
his workers with one hand wrought on the wall, and with the 
other held each his weapon. The Tirshatha encouraged them, 
saying, “ The God of heaven will prosper us ; ” kept up his own 
heart by crying, “ Hear, O our God, we are despised.” 

The adversary used craft, sending to the governor, saying, 
“ Let us meet in one of the villages of the plain of Ono.” But 
the wise cup-bearer responded, “ I am doing a great work, I can- 
not come down.” 

Nehemiah was also sorely tried by the hardness of heart and 
rebellion of his own countrymen. They held their brethren en- 
slaved, and defied Jewish law. But the Tirshatha had come 
armed with civic power ; he was strong to administer laws ; he 
held the reins of government with a firm grasp, and while he 
tenderly persuaded the people, they knew that the right to enforce 
justice was in his hands. 

This noble heart was also distressed by a- knowledge of the 
treachery of those whom he had come to aid — as he writes : 
“ Moreover in those days the nobles of Judah sent many letters 
unto Tobiah ... for there were many in Judah sworn unto him . . . 
also they reported his good deeds before me, and uttered my 
words unto him.” 

Nehemiah has in modern history his parallel in William the 
Silent, Prince of Orange. What Nehemiah was to Judah, was 
William to Holland. These two hero patriots are similar in 
largeness of heart and brain ; in noble devotion that knew no 
thought of self-aggrandizement ; in stern resolution which tri- 
umphed over the greatest difficulties ; in faith which drank vigor 
from a celestial source ; in firmness under scorn, treachery, flat- 
tery, and secret hate. 


NEHEMIAII. 


481 


Had Nehemiah been one whit less upright, less entirely faithful 
both to his countrymen in Judah, and to his king Artaxerxes in 
Persia, the cause of Israel would have been lost. 

When the wall of the city was rebuilt, Nehemiah set up the 
gates, repaired the houses and palaces, numbered the people ac- 
cording to their genealogy, and appointed the priests and Levites 
in their courses of service in the sanctuary. He then established 
the different families in their own cities ; appointed them to come 
up for the ordained feasts, and, to confirm them in their faith and 
observances, had Ezra publicly instruct them in the law. Wifih 
this act of national worship, Ezra reappears in the history. During 
the few years previous he may have been in Persia, and his death 
probably occurred during the absence of Nehemiah, when, accor i- 
ing to his promise, he returned to Artaxerxes. 

When the cup-bearer had first asked leave of absence, he hud 
set twelve years as the limit of his stay. To this Artaxerxes bad 
agreed, and the sequel shows the friendship of the monarch ; for 
at the expiration of these years the cuji-bearer was j ust as welcome 
and as honored in his office as before he intermitted it. In twelve 
years Artaxerxes had not been able to find a more gracious, dig- 
nified or trusty attendant than this exile Jew. 

During the twelve years in which he had served as Tirshatha, 
Nehemiah had refused to receive any tribute or payment from the 
people, but had maintained his own establishment and exercised a 
large hospitality. If the accusations of Sanballat and Tobiah, 
when they charged him with an intention of rebelling and setting 
up a kingdom for himself, had had any effect on the mind of 
Artaxerxes, he soon convinced himself of the uprightness of his 
servant. After again enjoying the luxury and pleasure of the 
royal court for a season, Nehemiah got leave to return to Pales- 
tine to spend the remainder of his days. His office of governor 
was restored to him, and he took a final leave of the splendors of 
31 


482 


NEHEMIAH. 


Shushan. It was not that he wanted power, for his position as 
cup-bearer was loftier than that of governor over the feeble Jews ; 
but his heart was not in the Persian court; it abode in the deser- 
ted sanctuary, and with the sepulchres of his fathers ; his hopes 
were set not on foreign potentates, but on Him, the coining One, 
the Jehovah, Christ, who was to spring from the line of David. 

Nehemiah lived eminently in the light of the future life. He 
measured all temporal and finite good by the greatness of the 
infinite. He had his eyes ever fixed on that Day for which all 
other days were made, the day of account. He wished so to live 
as to stand before his returned Lord a faithful servant. His cry 
was, “ Remember me, O my God, for good.” 

It was this judging ever with a righteous judgment which kept 
him firmly in the best way, and delivered his feet from falling 
into the snares laid by his adversaries. When Tobiah sent for 
him to come to Ono, there was a determination to assassinate him. 
Of this Nehemiah was ignorant, but he reflected that his present 
duty was to build the wall of Jerusalem. His post was among 
the sons of Jacob ; and the Lord could deal with Israel’s enemies. 
This thought caused him to reply, “ I am doing a great work, and 
I cannot come down therefore he unconsciously saved his life. 

Again Shemaiah was hired to betray him to Tobiah. Pretend- 
ing to be a friend, Shemaiah revealed an imaginary plot, beseeching 
the Tirshatha to escape by taking refuge in the Temple. Nehe- 
miah possessed that blessed wealth, mens sibi conscia recti ; the 
sanctuary was often made the refuge of the flying criminal ; the 
just governor had done no wrong, and should fear none. He re- 
plied calmly, “ Should such a man as I flee ? ” And who is there 
that, being as- 1 am, would go into the Temple to save his life? I 
will not go in.” Then he perceived that God was not with his 
interlocutor, but that he was dealing deceitfully. 

On his return from Susa, Nehemiah carried forward the work 


NEHEMIAII. 


483 


of establishing the nation in its ancient form of worship and civil 
rights. He insisted on a proper maintenance of the tribe of Levi ; 
weeded from the chosen race the foreign element which had grown 
up into it; and again pitted his strength against the mighty 
and evil influence of Tobiah. 

The vitality of the Jewish nation lias ever been a matter of 
wonder. No race has been so persecuted, so trampled upon, yet 
it has appeared even to thrive upon the efforts made to extripate 
it. From Pharaoh, to Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, ungodly 
rulers have expended on Israel their fury. Egyptians, Philistines, 
Syrians, Persians, Chaldeans, Macedonians, Eomans, fought 
against the sons of Abraham ; murdered them by millions ; tore 
them from their land and carried them into captivity, sought in 
every way to eradicate their religion, their mother tongue, their 
ancient customs, and to absorb the nation. Yet never has a peo- 
ple maintained so distinct a nationality. 

Wrenched from their beloved land and flung out to die in the 
world’s highways, suddenly they took root and throve everywhere. 
Pilgrims of commerce, they traversed every soil and every sea ; 
given even the poorest foothold, and they grew rich and strong, 
became a power to be felt, climbed unexpectedly to high places 
of the state, and everywhere and at all times were Jews in heart 
and feature. Mingle never so much Gentile blood'in their veins, 
and the drops of life distilled from Jacob are paramount, so that 
the beauty who enters the salon, and the broker in his office, may 
bear any name and speak any tongue, and still an unmistakable 
something proclaims the seed of Abraham. 

Establish a Jew in a palace, pour wealth upon him, flatter him, 
honor him; you cannot bribe him to forget Jerusalem, though 
mayhap he has never seen the City of David. Speak to him of 
Mount Zion, and every fibre of the Jew nature thrills responsive. 
He cannot help it; the impulse was born in him, will only die 


484 


NEHEMIAH. 


with him. His devotion to Palestine, his clinging tenderness to 
the site of his temple, and his passionate memory of the traditions 
of his race, are a part of his religion; out of Zion light is to 
shine for him; his Star is to beam from Jacob; there the 
Anointed shall reign over a ransomed people in a glorious land. 
Let him reach Christianity, the very consummation of his hoary 
creed, and lo, his land and his brethren are dearer still. Messiah 
has made every spot of Jewish land sacred. There, says the 
Jewish convert, was He born, there He died and rose, and shall 
return my Brother according to the flesh. Patriotism is his r<ih 
ligion, and his religion is patriotism ; and the history of the nation 
is such, that while religion and patriotism are in any race closely 
wedded, in the Jew they are one. 

We give a hasty glance at Nehemiah as a reformer. 

He was a shining example of the virtues he would inculcate. 
He was logical in argument against an evil course ; left the sinner 
no loophole of escape, and was especially happy in presenting the 
highest motive. He says to the people, “ Ought ye not to walk 
in the fear ,of our God, because of the reproach of the heathen 
our enemies ? ” The glory of God was the first thought of his life; 
it was to him an incentive for the performance of duty, and it was 
the motive which he set before others. 

He believed in no half-way measures; firm and impartial, high 
position could not bribe him, nor boldness intimidate; Priest, 
High Priest, Levite, common person, the meanest of the people, 
and the powerful Tobiah, were in his opinion on a complete 
equality as respected the law; station could not alter right and 
wrong. 

Nehemiah was the Reformer whom we have seen copied by 
such men as Calvin and John Knox. We might imagine that 
the last sixteen verses of the book of jNehemiah were written of 
the Genevan regenerator, or the sturdy bulwark of the Scottish 


NEHEMIAH. 


485 


Church. In the earnestness and simplicity of the narrative there 
is something amusing. 

The returned Tirshatha has his hands full. The walls are 
builded and dedicated ; the gates are set up ; prosperity is returning 
to Jerusalem ; her streets are lined with dwellings ; her marts are 
full of traffic ; caravans come and go ; the song of the vine-dresser 
echoes on the hill ; the shout of those who tread the wine-presses 
fills with glad tumult the golden summer air ; the countryman 
brings his sheaves of wheat and barley to the market ; girls and 
women and slender lads troop from the villages, with wine, grapes, 
figs, butter, cheese, “ all manner of burdens.” The busy Tyrians 
have returned to their old-time ally ; they come with fish fresh 
from the bright waters ; they bring rich merchandize, and “ all 
manner of ware,” and, as at the building of Carthage, the city 
hums like a full hive through all the busy week. But, alas, when' 
on the Sabbath the good Tirshatha, goes to the Temple to worship, 
the gates of the city are open still ; Jews and Gentiles crowd street 
and stall ; the cries of the hawker of fruits, and the chaffering of 
the buyer, sound as on other days; again this long-wasted land is 
denied her Sabbath. 

At once the governor resolved to destroy these ill practices ; he 
called together the nobles ".and contended with them.” He ex- 
hibited the dealings of God in the past, and warned them of cer- 
tain judgments. But he would not trust matters to the tardy, or 
imperfect measures taken by half-convinced nobles. Not he ; as 
the evening before the Sabbath darkened, he went forth and saw 
to it that every gate was closed ; so to remain until the first day. 
of the week should dawn. Suspicious of the integrity of the porters, 
he set his own servants to watch at every gate. 

Now for two or three Sabbaths the “ merchants, and sellers of 
all kinds of wares lodged without Jerusalem.” The clamor of 
their contention; of their complaints, of their appeals to the inha- 


486 


NEHEMIAH. 


bitants, and wrath over the injury done their merchandize by de- 
lay, disturbed that solemn stillness which on the sacred day must 
only be broken by the voice of prayer and praise. Prompt in all 
his dealings, Nehemiah addressed the camp of traffickers: "Then 
I testified against them, and said unto them, Why lodge ye about 
the wall? If ye do so again I will lay hands on you.” “ From 
that time forth,” he adds with serene satisfaction, “ they came no 
more on the Sabbath day.” 

Another crying evil that distressed the Tirshatha was the in- 
creasing custom of foreign marriages. One of the leading features 
of the Jewish policy had been to preserve the national purity. 
They had been particularly forbidden to contract marriages with 
strangers. In the general declension of the nation, many Jews 
had wedded women of Ashdod, Ammon and Moab, and to the 
horror of Nehemiah the streets of the holy city were crowded with 
frolicking children, who instead of being pure-blooded Israelites, 
were of a mixed race, speaking a mongrel tongue, half “ the Jews’ 
language ” and half a Philistine dialect. 

The good governor’s wrath appears to have risen high. He 
writes : “ I contended with them and cursed them, and smote cer- 
tain of them, and plucked off their hair.” His cursing was not 
profanity, but a pronouncing of the condemnations and penalties 
assigned to this transgression by Jewish law; for the rest we see 
the Oriental passion. To-day a reformer who used Nehemiah’s 
methods would be carried to a police court and charged with as- 
sault and battery. Then his manner was perfectly in order ; simply 
showed his earnestness, and gained his object. 

Finding that one of the sons of Joiada, the High Priest, had 
made “ a strange marriage,” with the utmost decision Nehemiah 
“ chased ” the offender out of the city ; lest an alien should ever 
reach the highest office in the Hebrew Church. Upon all his acts 
this ardent, honest, simple-hearted man, whom courts could not 


NEHEM1AH. 


487 


corrupt nor power intoxicate, calls down the blessing of the Lord. 
He writes his own most excellent epitaph : “ Remember me, O my 
God, for good.” It is the cry of the Christian patriot. 

“ God and his native land,” the holy Temple and the sepulchres 
of his fathers, had been the central thought of his life. For them 
he labored and prayed, lived and died, and going down into the 
dust to wait the coming of the Resurrection Angel, supplicated, 
as may we all : “ Remember me, O my God, for good.” 


r 


XXIV. 

JOSHUA, THE SON OF JOZADEK. 

THE ROYAL HIGH-PRIESTHOOD OF OUR LORD. 


N our study of Joshua, the son of Jozadek, we shall consider 
less the man than that office which was the most excellent 
type ever offered to the world, of the person and work of 
our Lord. 

Says Heubner : “ The need of a priestly office manifests itself 
in all religions, and among all nations.” The cry of a world has 
ever been for a Daysman with deity. Shivering back, affrighted 
from the abyss of doom, and pining for the celestial heights, man 
is conscious that his pollution needs an Intermediary to plead his 
case with Holiness. 

Reason scoffs at a “ priest-ridden people,” but subservience to 
priesthood is the expression of humanity’s self-consciousness of 
sin, and its yearning for acceptance. 

The wild warrior, who is fearless in the shock of battle, trembles 
at the supernatural ; and he who will not drop his head to king 
or kaiser, will kneel lowly before his priest. 

The Levitical priest, chosen and instructed of God, sanctified to 
his service, and performing the pure rites of true religion, was the 
climax of all sacred orders. The priesthood of the sons of Levi 
culminated in Him, their Antitype, the Royal High Priest Jesus, 
sprung from Judah, wearing the mitre, and swaying the sceptre. 

In the earliest ages, each head of a family was priest to his own 
488 



JOSHUA, THE SON OF JOZADEK. 


489 


household. In the Theocratic line there was no family of priests 
chosen, until the constituting of the Jewish nation at Sinai. There 
the Lord took the house of Levi, in lieu of all Israel’s first-born, 
to be a race of holy priests unto himself. This order naturally 
arranges itself into three divisions ; namely, the priests from Aaron 
to David’s day ; from David to the Babylonish captivity ; and 
from the captivity to the cessation of the priestly office, at the 
final overthrow of the Holy City. In this period of 1370 years 
there were eighty High Priests. 

Seraiah the High Priest, at the time when Nebuchadnezzar 
captured Jerusalem, was slain by the conqueror at Riblah. His 
son Jozadek spent his life as a captive in Babylon, and trans- 
mitted the sacred office to his son Joshua, who returned on the 
decree of Cyrus, with Zerubbabel to Jerusalem. Joshua stands 
at the head of the third and last series of priests. Joshua was 
born great ; he became great ; and he had greatness thrust upon 
him, by the critical times in which he lived. He inherited the 
splendid office which he held, being born in the direct succession 
from Levi. Trained up in captivity, the painfulness of his lowly 
exile life matured a character of such singular strength and 
symmetery that he was equal to every emergency ; was one of those 
happy souls who can do the right thing at the right tftne, while 
the favor of Cyrus, the restoration of the Jews, and the prominent 
part Joshua was made to play in the rebuilding of the Temple 
ami the reorganizing of the nation, made him an eminent his- 
torical character. Levi had had saintly sons ; Phineas the 
zealous,” “ Eli the submissive,” Jehoiada the patriotic, Hilkiah 
the high-hearted reformer, were glorious men, but Joshua, bearing 
the blessed name of Jesus, assigned the work of restoration, and 
placed in sacred vision, withstanding Satan bqfore the Angel of 
the Lord, overtopped his goodly brethren, as the most precious 
type of Christ among them all. 


490 


JOSHUA, THE SON OF JOZADEK. 


As it takes countless myriads of grains of sand to even imitate 
a mountain, so a multitude of finite objects have been demanded to 
exhibit the Majesty of Heaven, arrayed in flesh, redeeming sinners. 
In the Tabernacle service, the priest, his clothing, his functions, 
ministrations, and the victims which he laid on the altar, all were 
required to set forth Him who was slain for our iniquities. 

The two goats, one for Jehovah and one for Azazel , were needed 
to typify the Lord who shed his blood for fallen man, and bore 
away our guilt into the shadows of the land of forgetfulness. 

In the same manner, Joshua as a religious leader, and Zerub- 
babel as a civil ruler, were at the same period the symbols of Him 
who should be to his church both Priest and King. Thus when 
the captivity ended, and the Remnant returned to build up their 
waste places, Zechariali and Haggai animated the souls of these 
leaders, by words of Him who descending from the prince Zerub- 
babel, should unite his office and that of Joshua, being a crowned 
priest continually. 

The book of Hebrews is chiefly occupied in setting forth the 
priestly office of Christ, and explaining it in the light of its Levi- 
tical type. 

“ The whole ancient world cried out for a Reconciler ; ” the 
promise and imagery of his work given to the Israelites assuaged 
in them the cry of soul-hunger, which went up from all the nations 
beside. The modern world sees types perfected, and shadows pass 
away. The glorious Reality has come, and is revealed to the eye 
of faith, standing in the upper sanctuary, exercising His office, an 
eternal and perfect priesthood : 

“And yet we turn away, and yet God’s kindness 
Forgives our blindness.” 

Christ is our prophet, priest and king; in showing him to the 
world, two of these offices have been variously combined in different 


JOSHUA, i'he son of jozadek. 491 

holy men ; David was king and prophet; Jeremiah was priest and 
prophet ; Melchizedek was priest and king ; but only in Jesus have 
the three functions been united. Three generations before Levi, 
Melchizedek, unique and marvellous, the Orion of prophetic con- 
stellations, rises upon the horizon of our vision, and paces through 
the centuries in mystical splendor, changel'essly pointing to his 
antitype, and leading our awed souls far out into the awful pro- 
fundities of the eternal wisdom. 

Melchizedek/ king of righteousness, and king of Salem, ruled and 
defended his subjects in his royal right ; and exercising his priestly 
office stood up between them and God, leading their orisons, teach- 
ing them holiness, pleading for their acceptance. Jesus, seated at 
the right hand of God, having the uttermost parts of the earth for 
his inalienable possession, subdues his enemies and ours, and rules 
us with a righteous sceptre ; at the same time, he as our Priest in 
the Holy of Holies, ever liveth to intercede, and to claim our 
pardon as the reward of the sacrifice of himself. 

The High Priest on the great day of Atonement having sacri- 
ficed the victim, entered into the Most Holy place, bearing the 
blood of the sin-offering, and a censer of incense. These he offered 
before the Lord, the people without in hearty solemnity joining in 
his act, and regarding it as the ratification of their peace with God. 
In this rite the priest with his person carefully purified, his gar- 
ments of spotless white linen, and his thoughts turned for several 
past days on the important duties of this solemn ceremonial, was a 
striking type of some holy One, who in his own person was divinely 
pure, and able to purify his people. The incense was significant 
of prayer, as in the Apocalypse John saw the “ golden vial full 
of odors, which are the prayers of the saints.” This fragrant cloud 
surrounding the mercy seat, and veiling the glory of the Shekinah, 
expressed the ardent desire of the priest, in which the people 
united, for acceptance with the Everlasting Father. The blood 


492 JOSHUA, THE SON OF JOZADEK. 

foreshadowed the blood of Jesus, potent in earth and heaven : “ For 
without shedding of blood is no remission of sins.” 

The High Priest of the line of Levi must necessarily fail in 
many points as a type of the Royal High Priest of Judah. The 
priest in the temple was sinful, and must make expiation first for 
himself ; the blood which he presented was of “ bulls and goats 
which cannot take away sin.” His expiatory-offering must be 
yearly renewed, while Jesus shed his blood once for all ; the priest- 
hood of Levi was temporal ; the sacred line lapsed, its work was 
done ; but Jesus remaineth a High Priest forevermore. 

In the economy of God’s Providence the Church has now reached 
that period of her history when the vicarious sacrifice has been 
made, and her glorious priest has withdrawn into the Holy of 
Holies. We wait without ; our attitude should be prayerful ex- 
pectation ; should be tender love and ardent faith. Within the 
veil where atonement only can be made, He stands, the First-born 
of many brethren, performing the highest function of his priest- 
hood. When in the earthly Tabernacle the sin-offering was slain, 
the atonement was yet incomplete until the blood had been pre- 
sented with incense at the mercy seat. 

Jesus descended to us, to make on the altar of Calvary that 
gland sacrifice to which all others had pointed from the foundation 
of the world. The spotless victim having been prepared from all 
eternity, was slain once for all. With the expiring sigh, “ It is 
finished,” our Lord’s work of pain and humiliation ended ; being 
so much better than the Mosaic sacrifice, it was not needful that 
he should be offered up more than once. 

Having concluded this part of his work, he retired to the 
Holiest place of all, the Heaven of heavens, where he remains our 
potent and continual Intercessor, casting out none who come ; with 
divine prescience reading the wish of each contrite heart, and for 
every one who throws himself upon his Mediatorial mercy, he 


JOSHUA, THE SON OF JOZADEK. 


493 


pleads the potent merit of liis shed blood, which is ever in the 
sight of the Eternal Father. 

As the Jewish High Priest was a man of like passions with the 
people, as he had formerly stood in their midst, and could keenly 
sympathize with their emotions; so Jesus, our High Priest, having 
dwelt among us 1 in this vale of tears, during his period of humi- 
liation, is touched by a feeling for our infirmities ; having been 
a in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” He is 
now on the right hand of God exalted as a Prince and a Saviour ; 
his atoning blood is the sufficient price of our peace with Gcd, 
and is the “ life of all vital godliness.” 

The Lord dwelt 'among the Jews in prophecy and in person, 
until they had finally and fully rejected him ; when they evidently 
would not have that man to reign over them, and put him to death, 
he withdrew from their midst. When in as clear a manner the 
will of the Gentile nations toward Christ shall be shown, he shall 
suddenly return. From the eternal heights lie shall come down 
to dwell among us, our Sovereign Ruler ; and the Church misses 
a very large element of her happiness when, instead of looking 
for her Beloved’s coming as the fruition of all her hopes, and the 
climax of her joys, she trembles at it as an awful judgment scene, 
when terror and trouble shall culminate in a dread tempest of un- 
speakable anguish. Is this the frame of mind for Christians ? 
Their High Priest is the “ Son consecrated forever.” Their sacri- 
fice is the “ Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world.” 
The Lord of Hosts has promised, “ Their sins and iniquities will 
I remember no more.” 

Joshua, the son of Jozadek, as the Chief Priest of the Restora- 
tion, was peculiarly a type of Jesus, the Restorer of Paradise. 

After the long captivity among idolaters, the chastened children 
of Jacob sought “ beautiful Zion,” the inheritance of their fathers. 
Traditions of its excellence, throned on the " sides of the north,” 


494 


JOSHUA, THE SON OF JOZADEK. 


“ the city of the great king,” and “ the joy of the whole earth/’ 
had been to them as are to us the Scriptural reminiscences of Eden, 
and the melodious legends of the golden age. 

Across the dreary length of desert, through the mountain passes 
of Gilead, and over the well-loved Jordan they pressed, weary and 
travel-stained, upheld by their passionate longing for their home. 
They found it waste and desolate. The charred ruins of the 
Temple had for seventy years been beaten by sun and wind and 
rain ; the walls built by a race of kings had crumbled to decay ; 
the fountains which had made music for centuries were choked 
with rubbish ; the houses of cedar and the porches of judgment 
were perished ; the homes of a people had utterly departed ; the 
land had enjoyed her Sabbath, a long solemn rest, the sad stillness 
of a mighty tomb. 

Such was the scene which met the eyes of Zerubbabel and 
Joshua, as, pressing on at the head of their caravan, they 
gained the last steep ascent, and saw before them the “ place of 
their fathers’ sepulchres.” 

The High Priest came to a ruined, desolate land, but he came 
to restore. The fabric of the Temple had been destroyed, but he 
should build a better house, whose glory should be greater than 
that of the former. Zerubbabel, the chief of feeble bands, worn 
by toil and captivity, was to found anew the empire. 

Christ came to a world enslaved and miserable ; its innocence had 
perished, its hopes trailed their banners in the dust; darkness had 
settled on its future ; from gloom to gloom it seemed destined to 
labor on. He came the Restorer of our peace ; he had holiness 
sufficient for us all ; he brought the promise of a dearer Paradise 
than Eden ; the crumbled Temple of our early faith he was to 
build up in Himself, the Temple of the New Jerusalem. 

Joshua the High Priest was the central figure in a vision of 
Zechariah : he was seen standing before the angel of the Lord, 


JOSHUA, THE SON OF JOZADEK. 


495 


while Satan stood at his right hand to resist him. Perhaps the 
Evil Spirit used the reproach he has so often found to prevail ; 
affrighting the soul with its exceeding sinfulness and ill-deserving; 
asserting that our sins are too great to be forgiven, therefore let us 
go on in desperation. The rebuke of the angel was, “Is not this 
a brand plucked from the fire?” From the very jaws of destruc- 
tion, from the leaping fires of our own keen remorse, and the as- 
saults of hell, the Ford is strong to snatch the smoking brand, 
which he is too pitiful to permit to be destroyed. ■ 

Joshua, exhibiting the case of humanity, stood before the angel, 
“clad in filthy garments.” The command was given, “Take 
away the filthy garments,” and as they were removed were added 
the comfortable words, “ Behold I have caused thine iniquity to 
pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with a change of raiment.” 

Here was typified the Robe of Christ’s Righteousness covering 
the beloved of the Lord, so that they are brought unto their King, 
spotless and acceptable in his presence. But grace yet more 
abounded, for “they set a fair mitre, upon his head;” for. the 
righteous shall be kings and priests unto God. 

Having been thus the symbol of redeemed man, Joshua became 
the image of man’s Redeemer. Clad in glorious apparel ; crowned 
with a priestly mitre ; resisting the Arch Enemy of humanity ; 
doing the will of the Everlasting Father; the son of Levi became, 
in a more eminent manner than ever before, an image of our 
kingly High Priest, the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls. Then 
came a voice from the Infinite Glory, “ Behold I will bring forth 
my servant the Branch.” 

Assured thus of the love o'f his God, and strengthened by a re- 
newed promise of the Coming One, Joshua the son of Jozadek was 
enabled to carry on his life work among the returned Jews with 
renewed vigor. 

The Temple which rose under his supervision was to endure 


496 


JOSHUA, THE SON OF JOZADEK. 


until the coming of Christ. When the Holy House built by 
Solomon was dedicated, the glory of God came down and filled it ; 
the foundations of this second Temple were laid amid joy and 
tears ; the noise of the shout of joy could not be discerned from 
the noise of weeping : the old men mourned over glories passed 
away; the young men, buoyant with hope, shouted over good 
things to come. Despite the tears, the glory of this Temple was 
to exceed the splendid trophy of the zeal and wealth of Solomon ; 
for He to whom the ghostly fingers of every shadow and symbol 
had pointed, was to stand within its court on the Great Day of t he 
Feast, crying, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me a/.id 
drink.” These arches were to ring to old Simeon’s triumph-song, 
“Mine eyes have seen thy salvation.” Here among the doctors 
should stand the child-Messiah, teaching the teachers of the people; 
here the healed sufferer should learn that “ it was Jesus who had 
made him whole.” 

As our only hope of salvation lies in the efficacious priesthood 
of our Lord, it is well for us frequently to consider his perpetual 
exercise of that office, as his mediatorial work and person will 
forever continue the ground of our acceptance with God ; having 
on earth interceded for us, he continues our Intercessor in the 
skies ; he acts as our Advocate, because his work was perfect, and 
because wearing our nature, and knowing, by personal experience, 
our wants and woes, he can forever adapt his “ ceaseless inter- 
cessions to the entire current of our experience.” 

It is evident that so large a part of the Pentateuch is occupied 
with descriptions of the priestly office, dress, laws, and obser- 
vances, because all were designed to lead the heart toward Him, 
who abideth a Priest forever. 

Christy the central idea of Scripture, is delineated in his human- 
ity, his divinity, his triple offices, that he may never be to us a 
Stranger, and one far off, but may be entwined with all our 


JOSHUA, THE SON OF JOZADEK. 


497 


thoughts, and fill with his blessed presence the current of our 
daily lives. The religion of the Jew preached to him perpetually 
of the Coming Christ, the crowning glory of his race, and the 
Hope of the World. All nature, and all the mutations of his- 
tory, are for us equally full of reminiscences of the Man of Sor- 
rows, and prophecies of the King who cometh in clouds. 

“ Seeing then that we have a great High Priest, that is passed 
into the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our 
profession. 

“ For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with a 
feeling for our infirmities ; but was in all points tempted like as 
we are, yet without sin. 

“ Let us, therefore, come boldly unto the throne of grace, that 

we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” 

32 


THE ERA OF HOPE FULFILLED. 


XXV. 

JOHN THE BAPTIST. 

THE IRON LINK. 


S forty years of wilderness and wanderings stretched between 
lotus-crowned Egypt, the flowery pasture land of Goshen, 
and Canaan, flowing with milk and honey, and enriched 
with vineyards and olive groves; so between Malachi, 
proclaiming the rising of the Sun of Righteousness with healing 
on his wings, and the New Elijah, shouting, “ The kingdom of 
heaven is at hand,” wound a dreary waste of four hundred years. 

In these centuries men groped blinded, like eyeless Orion, 
seeking all about the horizon for the sun. 

As the night is ever darkest just before the dawn, so before the 
rising of the King of Light, blackness, like the plague of Egypt, 
wrapt the world, and filled the bosoms of men with brooding 
despair. 

Humanity had cried out fiercely, and struggled passionately 
with its fate; exhausted now, in darkness and feebleness, like 
Saul it “ lay all along the ground,” despairing because the Lord 
would answer “ neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by pro- 
phets.” 

Hope, in these dreary ages, stood a strengthening angel by some 
holy hearts ; as the promise made to Abraham is on the eve of 
fulfilment, we find brightly shining forth the Abrahamic piety. 

Through all the years this type had been forever recurring. 

498 



JOHN THE BAPTIST. 


499 


Manoah, Jesse, and their wives ; priestly, and royal, and peasant 
saints, had beamed with the undefiled religion of their great 
ancestor; and now, in the lineage of Levi, we behold a new 
Abraham and Sarah, waiting the blessing of the Lord. 

While in the early patriarchal family, the man had never stum- 
bled at the promise of God, and the woman had laughed in 
incredulity, here, at the opening of a new era, the daughter of 
Abraham has heired her father’s faith, and the descendant of 
Sarah has been dowered with his mother’s doubts. 

Woman, from the days of Sarah and Rebecca, had been gradu- 
ally falling into serfdom ; some there were, in every century, who 
rose nobly to their legitimate station of mental and moral 
equality with man, to show that the ford’s view and purpose 
were unchanged. Now, as the new dispensation dawns in light, 
woman resumes her pristine position by man’s side, his friend and 
fellow helper, instead of his slave ; and Mary and Elisabeth lift 
up their jubilant voices as “ joint heirs of the grace of life.” 

The gospel period is ushered in with answered prayer. “ Fear 
not, Zacharias, thy prayer is heard,” are the words of the angel. 
There may have been a misconception among Scripture readers as 
to the subject of the priest’s prayers. It is evident that he has 
come to consider the birth of a son to himself as an impossibility. 
Like many of us, he limits the power of God, and though in 
earlier years he may have passionately prayed for heirs, he has 
now yielded to the inevitable so completely, that the voice of an 
angel, standing propitiously on the right hand of the altar, cannot 
at once re-illume his hope. 

But Zacharias has had another desire, another ardent yearning : 
“ O that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion ! ” Where 
is the long promised One, the Branch of David, the Virgin’s son ; 
where the Only Begotten of God, arrayed in flesh ? “O Lord, we 
beseech thee, send now salvation,” he had entreated. 


500 


JOHN THE BAPTIST. 


God, ever better than our fears, and more bountiful than our 
hopes, sends Gabriel on a most happy errand. “ Thy prayer is 
heard ! ” This is the Christ promise ; he lias expected that, and 
he sustains the good news. But when he learns that a child, born 
to himself and his aged wife, shall be the Forerunner, the New 
Elijah, the Herald of the King of kings, his spirit faints. 
“ Whereby shall I know this?” 

The sign is given. He is dumb, and this dumbness is most 
significant. “ When the voice of the preacher preparing the way 
of the Lord is announced, the priesthood of the Old Testament 
becomes silent. The Levitical blessing is hushed, when the Seed 
comes in, in whom ‘ all the families of the earth are blessed/ ” 

Zacharias and Elisabeth had lived long enough to be happy ; 
they had not died too soon, so that joy could shed its beams only 
across their graves. Prosperity goes into some houses only after 
the long-anxious and suffering owners have gone out forever. This 
pair were to have at once all they had asked for, and hoped for ; 
their eyes should see a Saviour, and a son ; that son the Prophet 
for whose coming, as the precursor of Messiah, a nation had waited. 
Elisabeth retired to the hill country, in devout contemplation to 
nourish her hope, and to prepare for that sanctified child, already 
filled with the Holy Ghost. 

John Baptist was to be the greatest of the natural progeny of 
women ; the last of Jewish Nazar ites, he soared above them all in 
character and office ; his mother’s faith assumed for him the vows 
of that separated line, and being yet unborn, he was consecrated 
to God. 

As a son of promise born in old age, John is like Isaac; the 
child of one written barren among women, he is like Samson and 
Samuel ; in his mission, he is like Elijah, the prophet of fire ; and 
the prophecies of Malachi and Zechariah about him point him out 
as one called to a lot of strife and sorrow. Every circumstance of 


JOHN THE BAPTIST. 


501 


his birth testified to the especial Providence of God ; and when 
his parents received him into their arms, their delight was chastened 
by the certainty that the child’s only peace and joy were to come 
when he had fulfilled his course, and trod, released from the body, 
the celestial hills ; earth could only offer him sorrow, toil and a grave. 

“ The new revelation of salvation begins in the days of Herod, 
when sin and misery had reached their climax, and when the 
yearning for Messiah was more intensely felt than eW. The 
Temple, so often the scene of the manfestation of the glory of God, 
becomes again a centre, whence the first rays of light secretly break 
through the darkness.” 

“ And the child grew and waxed strong in spirit.” Samson, 
that earlier Nazarite of promise, had been strong in nerve and 
muscle ; here was a man strong in moral purpose, strong in holy 
faith. At his birth fear fell on all around ; but for thirty years 
came profound silence ; expectation grown weary fell asleep at her 
post\; for he, the mighty Elias, was “ in the deserts until the day 
of his showing unto Israel.” He dwelt in the weird regions near 
the Dead Sea, a desert land, a shadow of this world, and of his 
own life in it, of toil and loneliness and pain. 

In this retirement his graces grew ; the virtues which he should 
most need became predominant ; zeal, humility, self-sacrifice, cour- 
age, were nourished; the Forerunner was fitted for his work, and 
when the thirty years were ended, his powerful voice sounded out 
loudly : “ Repent ! ” 

The first Elijah breaks on us from solitude, his parentage un- 
known, his early years unchronicled ; he comes a holy ascetic, a 
fiery reformer. “ As the Lord liveth, there shall be neither rain 
nor dew these years.” 

John the Baptist issuing from the wilderness, rings his clarion 
through the nation : “ Repent ! for the kingdom of heaven is at 
hand ! ” 


502 


JOHN THE BAPTIST. 


Because before the Omnipotent Eye all ages are a present space ; 
because he lives in an Eternal now, Pie calls the messenger be- 
fore the face of Christ, Elijah, seeing the similarity in the earlier 
and later prophets, both in person and in mission. The man who 
stood before Ahab was twin soul to him who stood before Herod. 

The outward resemblance between the two men was most re- 
markable. The messengers of Ahaziah described Elijah thus: 
“ He was a hairy man ; ” that is, wearing a coarse garment of 
haircloth, as well as having the uncut locks and beard of a Nazarite : 
“and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins.” 

Matthew writes of John Baptist: “ And the same John had his 
raiment of camel’s hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins.” 

The chief difference between the first and second Elias is, that 
John did no wonders; his distinctive work was to proclaim Jesus, 
mighty in word and in deed. It needed no halo of miracles to 
encircle the head of the last and greatest of the prophets, who pre- 
ceded the Lord Jesus ; to John was given the crowning honor of 
baptizing his Saviour; and Christ himself pronounced his eulogy : 
“ Verily, verily I say unto you, among those born of women, there 
hath not arisen a greater than John Baptist.” 

John stood the representative and final expression of the whole 
Old Testament. All the law and the prophets were until John 
the shadow of good things to come, the types and prophecies of 
Jehovah- Jesus. 

John gathered up all this spirit of four thousand years into one 
mighty voice, crying in the wilderness : “ There cometh one after 
me, mightier than I, whose shoe latchet I am not worthy to stoop 
down and unloose.” In him the fulness of the ages becomes a 
glorious introduction to Christ incarnate, the culmination of all the 
affairs of this mortal life. The kingdom of heaven doomed to suffer 
great violence from friend and foe, breaks into the world with 
two mighty men, John the strong, and Jesus who is stronger 
than he. 


JOHN THE BAPTIST. 


503 


John, when his hour had come, burst forth from the wilderness, 
and all the land was shaken. But while John \\;as the expression 
of the divine meaning of the Old Testament law and letter, and 
was also the exponent of the highest and purest types of Old 
Testament religious life, his position and work are unique. He 
is the link between the old world and the new ; between the Mosaic 
and Christian dispensations. His character, his work, his message 
arid his baptism, all have features distinctively his own. As the 
lone obelisk standing between the Desert and the fertile Nile valley 
of Heliopolis greets in its solitary grandeur the traveller’s eye, a 
landmark which none can mistake, John stands unmatched in 
history, marking the hour when old things passed away from earth, 
and all things became new ; when the early economy of symbolism 
gave place to the prefigured antitype. 

The fiery furnace of the Old Testament world, when the Church 
was preyed upon by idolatrous nations, when the warfare against 
the hosts of hell was hand to hand and daily renewed, and carried 
on amid defeat by bleeding hearts who searched the heavens with 
anguished eyes to see their King coming to their succor, was not 
wedded to the New Testament days of sore tribulations, of perse- 
cution and intolerance, by a jewelled clasp, by a band of gold, but 
by an iron link forged in the hottest fires of martyrdom. 

This man of the wilderness was not one clad in soft raiment ; 
nay, those dwell in kings’ houses ; he was no flower of courts and 
of courtesy; he -was the soul-brother on the one hand of Jeremiah 
in his dungeon; of the Hebrews in the Babylonian furnace; of the 
Maccabean brothers ; and on the other hand of the slaughtered 
"Waldenses, the massacred Huguenots, and the heroes of Smithfield 
and Holland, knitting the Church of the past to the Church of 
the present, both of which are under tutelage until the time ap- 
pointed of the Father; we see him fitted for his place, unostenta- 
tious, uncompromising, strong to resist and to endure. There is 
no gilding, no elegant ornamentation about this man ; he is the 


504 


JOHN THE BAPTIST. 


iron hand armed with an iron mace, a rude resistless weapon when 
a giant swings it ; and here is a giant, born amid prodigies, nur- 
tured in the wilderness on wilderness food, and coming forth a 
divinely commissioned iconoclast, he sweeps away a thousand 
things which have been good in their day, but whose day is done, 
because the last of the earth aeons is at hand, and man is called to 
a higher exercise of his powers. 

Some men are born an age too early for their genius ; other men 
are born an age too late; John Baptist was a man made exactly 
for his day; we see in him how well God fashions particular in- 
struments for particular work. This thought leads us to a brief 
consideration of the man’s character. 

First, then, his self-renunciation. He gave himself up abso- 
lutely to his mission. Thirty years he lived apart from the 
allurements of the capital city ; from sweet fellowship with fellow 
men ; from the tender influences of home; denied himself not only 
luxuries, but what we call the common necessaries of life. This 
outward renunciation is an image of what should be the inward 
renunciation of the world by all Christians. “ Spiritual life is 
that state wherein we freely renounce all things for Christ’s sake.” 
Nothing has a more wonderful effect upon the world than this re- 
nunciation of it by believers. Judgment being at hand, our 
safety lies in being ready to part with all things but our hope of 
salvation. 

The absolute holiness of John’s life is also to be remembered. 
Gross vice was rampant ; while ceremonial trifles were much re- 
garded, judgment, mercy and truth, the weightier matters of the 
law, were neglected. 

All the people bore witness to the prophetic office of John, and 
to the purity of his example. He represented the spiritual legal- 
ism of the Old Testament ; he personified the old time righteous- 
ness according to the law. This probity of character had been 


JOHN THE BAPTIST. 


505 


eminent in him from childhood ; he had been enriched by the 
Holy Ghost with spiritual gifts ; we do not read that any devil 
tempted him in the wilderness ; and yet we see that this holiness 
did not work in him self-justification, for his one longing desire is 
for the Saviour ; and when he watches Jesus walking by, it is 
with a deep sigh of relief, as of one casting down an intolerable 
burden, that he cries, “ Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh 
away the sins of the world.” 

Humility was an eminent trait of the Baptist. His sole aim 
was to hasten the interests of Messiah’s kingdom. He took no 
glory to himself ; he ever held up the overwhelming glory of his 
Successor, asserting that he himself is not worthy to perform for 
him the office of the meanest slave. The greatness of John shone 
most sublimely in his humility, which led him ever to designate 
that glorious work which shook Israel to the centre, as transitory 
and preparatory. 

John was little in his own eyes ; he was great in the sight of 
the Lord ; second only to One ; greater than all the Old Testa- 
ment prophets, he yields the palm alone to Him whose divinity 
graced humanity. 

The heroic constancy of the Baptist is worthy of our attention ; 
it should be a pattern for all believers. He was emphatically a 
man of one idea : that idea was Christ. Paul determined to know 
nothing save Christ and him crucified ; John knew nothing but 
the coming of the kingdom of heaven in the person of the Mes- 
siah. This single-heartedness, this fervid zeal in one cause, 
wrought upon the whole Jewish nation ; all classes were impressed, 
the energy of the one lonely preacher put to the blush all ranks 
and conditions of men. 

The eloquence of John was the eloquence of intense belief; it 
carried captive the consciousness not only of the people but of the 
hierarchy. When his decision and vigor had so stirred up the 


506 


JOHN THE BAPTIST. 


minds of the entire nation that they hung on his words, and might 
have been swayed to almost any course by his exhortation ; when 
the solemn delegation of priests and Levites came to question 
him, all the noble characteristics of the man shone out at once. 
Self-renunciation, holiness, humility, zeal : “ I am not the Christ. 

“What then, art thou Elias?” 

“ And he saitli, I am not.” 

“ Art thou that Prophet ? ” 

“ And he answered, No.” 

“ Who art thou, then ; what sayest thou of thyself? ” 

“I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight 
the way of the Lord.” 

Only a voice, and nothing more. He might have claimed 
honors, but he rejected all; he was only a voice crying out of the 
solitary place. But what a voice ! Its trumpet tones prepared the 
way before the King of kings : the holy ascetic coming up from 
the desert was the Herald of Jehovah- Jesus, who inhabiteth 
eternity. 

And the wild sounding of this voice, along the rocky defiles of 
the Jordan, leads us to the words it uttered, to the preaching of 
this man, who was in himself the epitome and conclusion of a.ll 
the legal economy, and the avant courier flying before the blessed 
feet of the new Dispensation. In John the New Testament and 
the Old met and clasped hands, and he wedded them with an 
iron ring. 

As a preacher, John was fearless, logical, picturesque, vehe- 
ment : and clinched his discourse by his practice. He dealt largely 
in the argumentum ad hominem. Flashing his eagle glance around 
his audience, he separated it into its representative classes, and 
thundered against them according to their need and their de- 
serving. 

Standing in the solitary district near Jericho, the broad waste 


JOHN THE BAPTIST. 


507 


was his synagogue, and under frowning skies, with the rough 
wilderness for his surrounding, his camels’ hair robe girt with 
leather, and his unshorn locks hanging about his shoulders, he 
was in keeping with his theme, and his handling of it, for his cry 
was ever of the bitter work of repentance. Of repentance he cher- 
ished those spiritual views propounded by the prophets, rather 
than the later legalism of Scribes and Pharisees. He deman- 
ded uncompromisingly the death of the old evil life, and an entire 
consecration to the new life of righteousness. 

A popular preacher in the highest senSe of the word, he seized 
on illustrations from every-day life, suited to the capacity of h is 
hearers : the woodman swinging his axe against unfruitful trees, or 
the cedars of Lebanon ; the farmer on the threshing-floor, securing 
the wheat and destroying the chaff, afford him means of pressing 
home the truth of the sinner’s doom, and crying to the careleus, 
“ Now the axe is laid to the root of the tree,” and “ he shall bum 
up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” 

He uncovered their moral characters ; he tore the mask from 
every face, and showed his hearers their undisguised selves. The 
sight was, as it will ever be, terrifying. When the embassy came 
to him from the Sanhedrim, he received them with denunciations. 
Severe diseases demand severe remedies, and the moral disease of 
the nation was at its worst. “ O brood of vipers,” he cries to the 
hypocritical hearers, “who hath warned you to flee from the 
wrath to come ! ” 

To every one he gave commandment for daily life and practice: 
the jealous, quarrelsome people, devouring each other and betray- 
ing each other, were bidden to live in brotherly community: “He 
that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none, and 
he that hath meat, let him do likewise.” 

There public extortioners, the tax collectors — and would he 
were here to preach to their descendants — came to him, and 


508 


JOHN THE BAPTIST. 


were promptly exhorted, to “ exact no more than is appointed 
to you.” 

The turbulent soldiers, seditious against their leaders ; ravaging 
the country, and abusing the populace, got their lesson : Do 
violence to no man ... and be content with your wages.” Thus 
he demanded fruits of the repentance which he inculcated, and 
they professed. 

Then his moral greatness towered to its height; when with 
one word he might have enlisted thousands on his side, when at 
his will he might have become the popular idol, he opens his 
mouth only to sound the praises of his Messiah. “ He that 
cometli after me is mightier than I . . . He shall baptize you with 
the Holy Ghost : whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly 
purge his floor.” 

The Voice from the wilderness swells into a mighty epic; the 
hero preacher is a divine poet, his rugged majestic words fired all 
souls, and his life accorded with his utterances. The harmony 
between this blameless, zealous, world-forsaking Nazarite, and the 
new life he advocated, did the work of a hundred sermons with 
those polluted priests and people. 

The seal of John’s message and work was his baptism. This 
holds like himself a solitary place ; it was not Levitical, nor was 
it Christian baptism; it was, as said his followers long time after 
to the Apostles, “ John’s Baptism.” 

He affirmed to his adherents that his baptism, like himself, was 
merely the forerunner of something more efficient; it did not 
secure salvation ; it was simply the earnest of repentance ; it was 
also a preparation for the coming of the Messiah, and its highest 
object was to point the people to his person. 

One chief aim of the Baptist in administering his ordinance 
was to show that mere legal or priestly lustrations can by no 
means purify the spiritual nature. 


JOHN THE BAPTIST. 509 

John hesitated to administer baptism to the Pharisees and 
Sadducees, beeause he felt sure that they were devoid of that 
repentance which the act. should set forth; their baptism would 
be a form, and nothing more. He was yet more reluctant to 
baptize our Lord Jesus, because he had nothing of which to 
repent ; the ordinance was far below so lofty a subject. “ It was 
not in his intellectual discernment, but in his feelings, that John 
erred in regard to Jesus ; he was ‘ offended ’ where, in analogous 
circumstances, Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Mary and Peter stum- 
bled.” Now, as later, he is distressed because Christ does not 
assert his majesty. 

With Divine forbearance, Jesus corrects his prophet’s mistake. 
“ Suffer it to be so now ; for thus it becometh us to fulfil all 
righteousness.” 

It is not possible that John could have grown to manhood 
ignorant of the wonderful circumstances of his own birth, and the 
more wonderful events grouped around the advent of the Son of 
Mary. These must have been the theme of much instruction 
from his parents, and of much profound thought. That Spirit, 
which sanctified and enlightened him, had promised him a dis- 
tinct, public, celestial sign, as to the person of the Christ; there- 
fore, while John knew Jesus as a man knows anything by human 
tuition, and knew him fully enough to shrink reverently from 
baptizing him, he yet, as the Apostle says, “ knew him not,” be- 
cause as yet he had not been granted the prophetic, or divine 
certitude, concerning his Messiahship. 

While John had known of Jesus, and had doubtless seen him 
on occasions, it is more than likely that the divine allotment of 
events had been such that the Messiah and his Forerunner had 
been in so far kept apart, that there could be no accusation of 
collusion between them. 

With the baptism of Jesus, John’s public mission ended; his 


610 


JOHN THE BAPTIST. 


work was as short as it was important. The rending heavens, 
the Divine Voice, the Supernal Dove, signified that the Messiah 
was now formally introduced to the world. John’s future testi- 
mony was to be in prison, pain, and almost despair. 

Still John pursued his ministry, led by his ardent zeal beyond 
its goal. His sole and burning desire was to prepare the way of 
the Lord ; his continuance of his work, after his office as herald 
had ceased to exist, occasioned dissensions between his hearers and 
those of Jesus, and caused the Jews to draw comparisons between 
the asetic Prophet in the wilderness, and the genial and bountiful 
Jesus of Nazareth. 

This exercise of his ministry did not long continue ; the fearless 
Nazarite was as sharp in his dealings with the crowned profligate 
who lorded it over Jewry, as he had been with the messengers of 
the Sanhedrim. 

Herod Antipas was a monster, who defied the laws of God and 
man. He had taken for his wife Herodias, the wife of his brother 
( Philip, who was yet living in retirement ; Herod the Great having 
excluded him from any share in the government. Herodias was 
the niece of both her husbands. 

John boldly rebuked the king for his unlawful marriage, and 
as a reward of his faithfulness was cast into prison. 

In Herod Antipas we see the Ahab, and in Herodias the Jezebel 
of the New Testament. 

In her wickedness, Herodias never falters ; her towering ambi- 
tion upholds her, and she still urges her husband on, when his 
timorous feet tremble at the entrance of that dangerous way, along 
which she boldly presses. 

The most vacillating of mortals, Herod agrees now with his 
wife in opposition to the people, when he casts the popular pro- 
phet into prison ; and now he sides with the nation, and against 
the queen, when none of her blandishments can induce him to put 
John to death. 


JOHN THE BAPTIST. 


511 


Herodias and Herod each feared John ; the crowned harlot 
feared him lest his wonderful influence should sway her yielding 
paramour toward virtue; and should cast her from that throne 
which she had sold her soul to obtain. 

Herod feared John, says Mark, “ knowing that he was a just 
man and a holy, and observed him ; and when he heard him he 
did many things, and heard him gladly.” 

What a picture have we here of this poor wretch, bowed in 
abject fear before the godly life which he has not self-denial suffi- 
cient to imitate ; with feverish eagerness listening to the preacher’s 
words, trying to hear something which will heal his inward pain, 
yet- will not be toe heavy a sacrifice ; doing many things, but not 
all ; improving in some few externals, if by them he may buy 
God’s peace; yet utterly unable to reach that self-renunciation 
which the Baptist unflinchingly demanded as the fruit of repent- 
ance. 

Josephus tells us that Herod feared the influence of the holy 
lif<?; of the Nazarite, as contrasted before the people with his own 
glaring profligacy; and was, therefore, the more ready to remove 
the prophet from public view. 

We now see this new Elias, after the performance of his brief 
mission, cast into prison. 

He who had grown to manhood in the wilderness, here, in the 
eau’ly meridian of his life, became a captive in the castle of 
Machserus, near the shores of the Dead Sea. Here Herod had a 
summer palace ; here are the hot springs of Calirohoe ; and here 
the Zerka Main River rushes toward the Dead Sea. 

In the chill dungeon of the castle, John was shut from all 
those bright summer sights and sounds which beguiled his captor ; 
nothing was left him but to ponder on the past, and to long with 
bitter heart sickness for some coming good. 

When the iron-bound doors of Herod’s prison at Machserus 


512 


JOHN THE BAPTIST. 


closed upon John the Baptist, the Dispensation of the Old Testa- 
ment passed away; the Law and the Prophets in the person of 
their last champion left the field, and Jesus, the Defender of his 
people, gave freely to the earth the salvation purchased by his 
blood. “ The law and the prophets were until John ; since that 
time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth 
into it/’ says Christ, who in his life and person magnified the law 
and made it honorable. 

Darkness, inaction, starvation, tell on the stoutest souls ; John, 
who had lived the free life of the wilderness, who had dwelt in the 
open air, held intercourse with beetling crags, and rushing brooks, 
and shadowy trees ; whose worship had been conducted under the 
illimitable dome of the sky, and the solemn stars, pined in cap- 
tivity, like a full grown eagle caged. 

In the blackness of his fate, all the past became misty and un- 
real ; the Devil, who had not dared to tempt him in his well knit 
ascetic youth, came to him now, and mocked him with whispers 
that the divinity of the Messiah had been his own wild dream ; 
that the voice from Heaven had been an echo of his fevered fancy; 
that the Celestial Dove had been an accident of Nature ; that the 
Salvation of Israel had not come out of Zion, else would He vin- 
dicate himself as a king; and all John’s past life had been a delu- 
sion and a fantasy, and for that poor cheat he must now pine out 
slow years of incarceration. 

In his agony, John did the only right thing that was left him 
to do ; he sent his disciples to find Jesus, and get from him some 
word to stay his fainting soul. 

In the castle prison John had been permitted to see certain 
of his devoted friends and disciples, and the staple of their 
converse had been Jesus. The disciples of John had witnessed 
the baptism of our Lord; they had heard John say afterwards, 
“ Behold the Lamb of God.” They had gone to John, saying, 


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JOHN THE BAPTIST. 


513 


" Rabbi, he that was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou 
bearest witness, behold the same baptizeth, and all men come to 
him.” 

Then John had made full profession of his faith: “ He must 
increase, but I must decrease. He that cometh from above is above 
all : he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth : 
He that cometh from heaven is above all . . . for God giveth not 
the Spirit by measure unto him.” 

These words had been the utterance of John’s day of strength, 
when he stood at Enon, near to Salim, surrounded by hearers and 
disciples, when he had been a vigorous man in mind and body: 
now a worn captive, he sent to the Lord, whom he had heralded, 
a pitiful cry. 

Two of his dearest disciples took the Prophet’s message to 
Christ. Going to Judea, where Jesus was working miracles, the 
two envoys found the Saviour and delivered their question : 
“John Baptist sent us to thee, saying, Art thou he that should 
come ? or look we for another ? ” 

Holy men.’ were these disciples of John; men plain of garb and 
speech, like their leader; men who had brought forth fruits meet 
for repentance; men who fasted and prayed oft, as said the people. 
They came now oppressed with the contagious doubts of their un- 
happy teacher ; anxious in their own souls, and torn with sympathy 
for the miseries of one dearer to them than a father. 

What an infinite compassion looked on them from the eyes of 
the Compassionate One, who felt in his own gracious spirit their 
griefs, and those of John, his kinsman according to the flesh, his 
Forerunner and loyal servant. 

Here was a trouble too deep to be reached by words ; Christ 
felt no resentment at the hesitation indicated in the message ; for, 
touched with a feeling for our infirmities, he appreciated the cir- 
cumstances pressing upon John, and knew that even this trembling 
33 


514 


JOHN THE BAPTIST. 


question expressed a faith greater than many loud professions 
from other men. 

Motioning the disciples of John into the number of his own, 
who surrounded them, Jesus pursued the work they had interrupted. 
These two men, watching by the Master through that busy day, 
saw the blind opening glad eyes to the beauty of earth ; saw the 
faces of the deaf light up as the harmonies of love and nature 
first fell on their long sealed ears; saw polluting leprosy fly at 
the purifying touch of the Holy One ; saw weakness grow sud- 
denly strong in Him ; saw evil spirits, furious demoniacal pos- 
sessions, own his sway. * 

“ The oracles are dumb, 

No voice or hideous hum 

Runs through the arched roof, in words deceiving. 

Apollo from his shrine 
• Can no more divine, 

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving ; 

Peor and Baalim 
Forsake their temples dim ; 

He feels from Judah’s land 
The dreaded Monarch’s hand, 

The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyne ; 

Nor all the gods beside 
Longer dare abide, 

Nor Typlion huge, ending in snaky twine.” 

Even Death restored his prey, and cold corpses lived again at 
the mandate of the Divine Nazarene. 

Ere evening fell, Jesus turned to the messengers : “ Go, tell 
John what things ye have seen and heard . . . and blessed is he, 
whosoever shall not be offended in me.” 

Xo sooner had these men gone their way than Jesus began to 
speak to the curious multitude concerning John. The people 
were prone to look on Jesus and the Baptist as rivals; Jesus 
desired to dissipate this view, and show himself and his messenger 

o 

as working in entire harmony. He wished also to defend John 


JOHN THE BAPTIST. 515 

from the imputation of faithlessness, or of retrogression from his 
own early statements. 

We see the Lord zealous for John’s religious reputation ; he 
will permit no stain to rest on the purity of his faith. So is he 
ever anxious for his followers and his ministry. 

It would be well for those who lightly lay hands on a minister’s 
reputation to consider this. “ Do my prophets no harm,” refers 
equally to reputation as to physical comfort ; and he who lays 
rash hands on the good fame of the Lord’s servant, touches, like 
Uzzah, the sacred ark. Guilty also is he who lightly esteems his 
own holy calling, and by word or act would carelessly sully the 
purity of his official character. 

Christ vindicated John, lest his mere questioning should mar 
the shining whiteness of his fame. 

“ What went ye out into the wilderness to see? a reed shaken 
by the wind ? ” 

Here he brings to mind the earnestness, the fearlessness, the 
firmness of the wilderness preacher. Let them not esteem him a 
man liable to change ; he is not a wind-shaken reed ; those grow 
lush and yielding by the water courses; in the wilderness are to 
be found the changeless peaks pointing to the skies year after 
year. 

“ What went ye out for to see ? a man clothed in soft raiment ? 
Behold, they which are gorgeously apparelled and live delicately 
are in kings’ courts ” — not in the kings’ dungeons ; they are the 
Herods, the Philips, the Herodiases of society ; whose vice flaunts 
its gay plumage in honest faces ; they contrast with this virtuous 
Nazarite, who could count your priests unholy ; they will falter 
and change, and pursue the vanities of this life. Not so this man, 
who goes to prison, and will presently meet death for conscience 
sake. 

“A prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet. 


516 


JOHN THE BAPTIST. 


This is he of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger 
before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.” 

“ Then all the people which heard him, and the publicans, jus- 
tified God, being baptized with the baptism of John.” 

Thus we see that when God undertakes to vindicate his ser- 
vants, he does it thoroughly and gloriously. 

The return of his messengers brought calm to the trouble-tossed 
soul of the Baptist. In the prison at Machserus, John had found 
his Horeb; like his prototype Elijah, lie could not fall in with 
the Divine arrangement of events ; he did not understand their 
slow progress, and he desired to have Messiah at once assert his 
power. He showed his humanity by his faltering; and Jesus 
shines by his side in calm Divinity. But the reply of Jesus was 
to his weary heart the still small voice, on the Mount of God. 

John, in his loftiest strength, had fully proclaimed Jesus : in his 
deepest temptation and greatest physical weakness, he only sp far 
wavers as to question of the Lord himself. We doubt not that 
with Jesus’ tender reply, a full measure of faith was meted out to 
him, for now indeed the hour of his most sublime testimony had 
come. 

In the gilded banquet hall of Machserus the graceful feet of 
Salome danced away the last moments of the “ greatest of those 
born of women.” Herodias won her way at last ; the two keen- 
witted, diabolical, relentless women, mother and daughter, like 
spirited, were more than a match for Herod the weak and wicked. 

Down goes the executioner to the dungeon ; short shrift is al- 
lotted, and none is needed ; for the fearless John is far more ready 
to die than live, if God is willing to grant him an end of his 
troubles. As. he sees the executioner enter the dungeon, his eagle 
soul plumes itself for flight above the sun. There is a wail of 
grief ; it comes from his disciples ; he falls, God’s matchless Naza- 
rite; so young in years; so old in work and in wisdom. In Herod’s 


JOHN THE BAPTIST. 


517 


dungeon dies the most elevated human character the world has 
ever seen. Salome carries on that charger to her mother a head 
which is even now most brightly crowned, and lifted high among 
the heavenly hosts that throng the City of our God. 

He is dead. Yet Herod fears him still ! His spectre seems to 
haunt the place ; to the king’s shocked sight his ghost comes forth 
from the grim castle of Machaerus, and lifts that wilderness cry, 
wildly re-echoed by the mountain fastnesses, “ Repent! repent!” 

His body has been buried in a rocky tomb, by weeping friends ; 
Herodias has glutted her malice by a sight of that gory head : his 
disciples have found consolation with Jesus, the loving Comforter 
of his people; but Herod knows of a phantom which will not be 
laid ; John, whom he beheaded, is forever in his dreams, coming 
forth from his sepulchre, declaring the vengeance of an outraged 
law. 

Herodias has no spell to charm him ; the wanton dancing of 
Salome cannot wile away the heavy-footed hours ; every courier 
brings news that terrifies ; every breeze has a rumor that appals, 
for the whole land is shaken by Some One who does wonders, and 
Herod cries out, “ It is John the Baptist risen from the dead.” 
Herod’s birthday was black with the deed that damned him ; but 
to John it was all white with the glory of an entrance to the better 
life : six months of imprisonment had been the prelude to ten 
thousand ages in the liberty of heaven. He had begun his work 
in the wilderness land of Judah ; he had passed on, preaching 
through the sweet and storied Jordan valley ; he had reached the 
court of Herod, and proclaimed the truth with an Archangel’s 
zeal, and now he had met his death by the cruel shores of the 
Dead Sea. 

Treating the death of John as an insult and injury to himself, 
Jesus refused to meet Herod, who in restlessness of remorse de- 
sired to see him, and withdrew to the wilderness of Gaulonitis, 
near eastern Bethsaida, in the dominions of Philip the tetrarch. 


518 


JOHN THE BAPTIST. 


John was the Abel of the New Testament. Herod was the 
Cain. John was the ardent Elijah, and Herod was the Ahab, 
while Herodias was the Jezebel of their day. 

The birthday banquet of Herod terminated in blood, like the 
fatal marriage feast of Navarre. As Charles the Ninth of France 
was driven to agonies of despair by visions of his massacred sub- 
jects, so Herod passed years of doubt and fear, lest the man whom 
he beheaded should come out of his grave, armed with superhu- 
man power, to execute upon him vengeance like a god. 

The departure of Jesus from the domihions of Herod was an 
emblem of that eternal distance which Herod had put between 
himself and salvation. 

As the mission of John was a prelude to the work of Christ, so 
his death was the precursor of Christ’s death. 

As the Baptist entered this life, and began his public career be- 
fore Jesus, so before him he ended his earthly strife, and entered 
the mansions of eternal rest. Christ’s harbinger on earth, he be- 
came above the herald of His return to the celestial heights. 


XXVI. 

HEROD. 


THE TRIUMPH AND FATE OF EDOM. 


CRIPTURE delights in dealing in sharp contrasts. This 
lively diversity of presentation more effectually fixes its 
lessons upon the heart. Thus the New Testament opens 
with the contrarieties of the unbelieving Jews, and the 
devout Magi ; the Divine claim ; and the birth in a stable. Before 
the splendid revelation of that Divine-human, the Light of the 
World, comes Herod the Edomite, a man sold to the Devil in all 
that he did. 

The broad difference between God’s thoughts and man’s thoughts 
is never more clearly shown than in the choice of heroes. The 
heroes of the world are not the heroes of the faith ; we call men 
great when God would write them very vile. 

Chief of the line of Idumean kings stands Herod, called the 
Great, yet great only in selfish ability and in crime. 

Of low birth and gross character, he owed his position to a 
crafty use of circumstances. 

He appears in Scripture history only at the close of his life, and 
that for short and evil work ; for the most part he belongs to that 
mighty chasm between Malachi and Matthew. 

Matthew writes of him as king of Judea at that eventful hour 
when the Heir of the Universe came in the lowly guise of a car- 
penter’s babe, to his earthly inheritance. 



519 


520 


HEROD. 


To Herod go the Magi ; and Herod, already in the grasp of his 
last disease, stretches forth his bloody hand, to deepen its stain 
with the life-tide of the little ones of Bethlehem. 

To read aright this man’s place in history, we must bridge 
many a hundred years ; the beginning of his story is in the tent 
of old Isaac at Beersheba ; and now we see the divine plan run- 
ning through the slow lapsing centuries, and the fulfilment of a 
prophecy which all but God had forgotten. 

Idumea is Edom ; Edom is Esau ; Herod was the chief of the 
Idumeans; in him Esau lived again — Esau in his rough, ungodly, 
early years; the half heathen freebooter, hating Jacob, resolved to 
destroy him. The advancing years had deteriorated the race of 
Esau ; the nobility of their sire had departed ; they exhibited his 
vices, and not his virtues. “ By thy sword thou shalt live, and 
shalt serve thy brother,” had been the word of Isaac to his elder- 
born. 

The history of Edom since Isaac’s day had been this in brief: 
While Jacob was in bondage and in the wilderness for four hun- 
dred years, Edom throve ; its boundaries were from the Dead Sea 
to the eastern arm of the Bed Sea, from IshmaePs haunts in Shur 
to the myrrh-dropping forests of Arabia. The land was moun- 
tainous, a fit nurse of daring souls ; its fertile vales could sustain a 
numerous population, and Mount Seir, its pride and glory, sat 
high above it, the terror of its adversaries. 

At this day Edom lies smitten by the hand of God, a land of 
the shadow of death ; as the Lord declared by the prophet Amos, 
“ I will send a fire upon Teman, and will destroy the high places 
of Bozrah.” 

Saul the Valiant first reduced Edom to the foretold vassalage 

© 

to Jacob ; David, following him, conquered the land and incorpo- 
rated it with his dominions. During the latter days of Solomon, 
the restless sons of Esau rebelled, and conspired against a ruler 


HEROD. 


521 


whom they hated ; in the time of Joram there was a defection, 
but Amaziah subjected them, and under Uzziah and Jotham, 
Esau still served Jacob. 

In the days of Ahaz, the proud blood which could not brook 
servitude, again threw off the yoke; but finally John Hyrcanus, 
with a strong hand, subdued the people, in his day, called 
Idumeans, and completely absorbed them in his own nation, 
forcing them to adopt circumcision, Jewish dress, forms and cere- 
monies, and made them part and parcel of the Jewish people. 

At length, in the year 47 before Christ, Antipater, an Idu- 
mean, rose high in favor with the Romans, and was made 
governor of Judea under Hyrcanus II., the Asmonean. Anti- 
pater had four valiant sons by his Arabian wife, Cypros, and these 
sons he early entrusted with power. Antipater has been described 
as a man “ who never slept, and was never wanting to himself.” 
Strong and alert, he forever gained the advantage in his covert 
strife with the Asmoneans, whom he pretended to support. The 
Jewish line was weak, the Edomite was vigorous, and as happened 
in later European history, the palace master became greater than 
his monarch, and founded a new dynasty. 

Antipater rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, and used his utmost 
endeavors to render himself popular with the Jews. His son 
Herod was, at an early age, made Procurator of Galilee, and 
carried on his government with much ability. 

When, at the very table of Hyrcanus, Antipater, that too potent 
power behind the throne, was poisoned in a glass of wine, his 
crafty son presently strengthened his own cause by divorcing his 
wife Doris, and betrothing himself to Mariamne, the beautiful 
and haughty grand-daughter of the high priest, Hyrcanus. 

At the recommendation of this pontiff, “ Roman Antony ” con- 
firmed to Herod his former powers, and even enlarged them ; but 
the young Idumean was less popular with the nation than his 


522 


HEROD. 


father had been, and saw himself constantly endangered by revolts 
among his subjects. 

Last scion of the royal Asmonean line was the boy Aristobulus, 
the brother of Mariamne. Herod’s proud fiancee and her mother 
had not failed to press upon his consideration their own superior 
birth, and in his danger and perplexity Herod went to Rome, to 
request that Aristobulus might be given the kingdom of his 
ancestors, .and he himself could govern the country under him, as 
his father had done under Hyrcanus. Thus he designed to secure 
the power, and to satisfy the prejudices of the Jews. 

Antony, at Rome, made Herod the startling proposition, that 
Herod himself should be king of Judea. 

The bait was a glittering one, and Herod the ambitious caught 
at it eagerly. Only a few weeks before in his despair, he had 
been on the point of committing suicide ; now he was offered by 
the Romans the crown of Jewry. 

Seven days did he remain at Rome, but in that brief period he, 
who came a distracted suppliant, was made a king ; and standing 
in the World’s Capitol, between Antony and Octavius, the fore- 
most men of the day, he was consecrated, by heathen rites, sove- 
reign over the people of Jehovah. 

Three months from the day when, desperate at his failing for- 
tunes, he fled from Jerusalem, he landed at Ptoleniais amid 
acclamations, and now indeed, as Isaac had prophesied, Edom had 
broken the yoke of Jacob from his neck. 

Owing to Jacob’s restiveness at receiving his servant for his 
master, three years passed before Herod was firmly established in 
his royalty. His entrance into Jerusalem as undisputed sovereign 
was accompanied by the death of Antigonus, whom he implored 
Antony to execute, and in whom ended the Asmonean dynasty, 
one hundred and twenty-six years from its glorious rise. 

No sooner was Herod in full power than he destroyed all the 


HEROD. 


523 


Sanhedrim but Hillel and Shammai, the famous doetors of the 
law. Hillel was president of the Sanhedrim, and lived to be one 
hundred and twenty years of age; he was succeeded by the devout 
Simeon, who took the infant Jesus in his arms with joy ; and 
Simeon was followed by his son Gamaliel, at whose feet Paul was 
educated. 

A career, begun in the murder of the flower of the Jewish 
nation, was destined to be marked all along its course by blood- 
shed. 

Herod, after a betrothal of four years, married Mariam ne, 
whom he loved with the mad fervor of his reckless race. 

Her matchless beauty was shared by her young brother Aristo- 
bulus, for whom Herod had once asked a crown. To appease 
the Jews, Herod made this lad high priest, but his envy was 
speedily excited by the enthusiasm with which the stripling pon- 
tiff’s appearance in public was greeted. 

Clad in the splendid robes of his office, this last of the Macca- 
bees, stood in the sanctuary beautiful and majestic as a young 
archangel ; the impressible Jews, ever enraptured with charms 
of person, and mindful of the lofty record of his splendid ancestral 
line, contrasted him with the low-born Idumean who kinged it 
over them, and hailed the pure-blooded Israelite with unbounded 
pride and love. 

Unable to endure the pangs of his jealousy, Herod accomplished 
the death of his brother-in-law, having him drowned as if in a 
frolic with some youths at Jericho. 

Verily the foot of Esau was pressing heavily on the neck of 
his prostrate brother. 

In this period, the history of Edom becomes the history of 
Herod, and the history of Jacob is that of the Asmoneans. 

Against them did Herod work with tireless hate, until every 
remnant of that race of royal priests descended from Asmonias, 
of the elder branch of Aaron’s family, was exterminated. 


524 


HEROD. 


Having compassed the death of Aristobulus, Herod next took 
the life of Hyrcanus, the ex-high priest, eighty years of age. 
This man had been his best benefactor, was the grand-parent of 
Mariamne, and living in feeble old age at Jerusalem, when he 
suffered the sleepless vengeance of the tyrant Edomite. 

Next victim was the beautiful Mariamne, a wife whom one 
moment the passionate Herod adored with extravagance, and anon 
hated as his rival, the daughter of kings, who flaunted her nobility 
in his face. 

Stirred up by his sister Salome, the worst of women, Herod 
having several times condemned his wife to death, at last, in a 
wild phrenzy, ordered her instant execution. 

Mariamne had borne him five children, three sons and two 
daughters ; the sons had been sent to Rome, where the youngest 
had died, and two were yet living, as hostages of their father’s 
fidelity to the superior government. 

Mariamne met her fate like a true child of the Maccabees; in 
the bloom of her beauty she went to lay down a life which had 
probably become most hateful to her, as shared with the monster 
who pursued her kindred with such relentless ferocity. 

Alexandra, the mother of Mariamne, was soon sacrificed to 
Herod’s rage. She was put to death while the tyrant was in 
agonies of remorse for the murder of his wife. No sooner was 
the peerless Jewess dead, than all Herod’s passion for her had 
returned. He raved about his palace beating his breast, tearing 
his hair, and shrieking the name of Mariamne, entreating her by 
all caressing names to return ; protesting that she could not be 
dead, and sending his terrified servants to seek and restore her, 
who was already in her grave. 

All the dominion which this royal lady had exercised over the 
king in her life, was increased tenfold after she had, by his order, 
been executed. He saw her wherever he turned his anguished 


HEROD. 


525 


eyes ; but when he sprang to clasp her, she faded from his touch, 
and stood an alluring phantom just beyond his reach, mocking his 
woe, as once, in her pride of beauty, she had mocked the protesta- 
tions of his love. 

From palace to palace, from city to city he wandered, finding 
no balm for his pain ; his courtiers, unable to console him, shrank 
trembling from the horrible expressions of his remorse and hope- 
less agony. 

Herod endeavored to find comfort in great enterprises, building 
cities, towers, fortifications: one moment placating the Jews by 
tributes to their worship, and splendid works at their temple, and 
again exasperating them by bringing into their Holy City the 
games, theatres and spectacles of Rome, and filling sacred Zion 
with the shouts of gladiators ; the cries of fighting wild beasts ; 
and the liiusic of contending poets, singing the praises of the gods 
of the Gentiles. 

In the magnificence of his architectural tastes, and in the num- 
ber and extent of his public works, he exceeded all the kings of 
Palestine except Solomon. If he had used the same wisdom, ear- 
nestness, and grace in pacifying and attracting the Jews, which he 
exercised in securing and retaining the favor of the Romans ; if he 
had employed his power first to govern quietly his own turbulent 
family, and if he had curbed his hatred of the Asmoneans, his 
reign might indeed have been glorious. 

But the evil dispositions of his relatives, especially of his sister 
Salome, the but half-smothered opposition of his subjects, and the 
anxieties of his connection with the Romans, called into operation 
all the darker features of his character. 

Esau, his great 'ancestor, had been frank, generous, brave; wild, 
but never cruel ; careless, and never crafty ; hasty, but devoid of 
malice ; low in ambition and gross of thought, but ever ready to 
meet overtures of friendship, and easily moved by entreaties; 


526 


HEROD. 


Esau grew wiser as he grew older ; his age mellowed his nature, 
and harmonized him with his gentle father and his devout and 
far-seeing brother. 

In Herod the demon of his evil heart grew rampant with pass- 
ing years; age found every vice intensified, and every early virtue 
dead and gone. In Herod flamed out all Esau’s antagonism to 
his brother Jacob ; Herod had lost sight of the hour of reconcili- 
ation, and of the solemn watch of the brothers at the grave of 
Isaac; the long serfdom of Edom had wrought in him bitter 
hatred, and nothing glutted his frantic hunger for revenge but 
Jewish blood. 

As a warrior, Herod was bold and brave ; as a financier, he was 
judicious ; he understood the development of national resources, 
and providing for national defence. He rebuilt Samaria, and 
founded Caesarea, making it a magnificent seaport, with a harbor 
that defied the Mediterranean storms. 

When, twenty-two years before Christ’s birth, a famine and 
pestilence smote the land, Herod behaved nobly ; he sacrificed his 
plate and personal treasures to buy food, and spread his benefac- 
tions not only through his own dominions, but gave freely to the 
perishing Syrians. 

This generosity went far to atone for past offences ; the people 
forgave him much, and had this new line of conduct been pur- 
sued, his life might have ended in peace. Instead, his tyranny 
grew worse and worse; insei^sate fury, rioting in robbery and 
blood, renewed the hatred of his subjects. 

Four years later Herod proposed to rebuild the Temple, which 
he proceeded to do with much splendor ; spending upon it some 
ten years’ time and great treasure ; the finishing and decorating of 
it was however carried on at the expense of the sacred treasury for 
many years. 

Herod received from Rome the two sons of the murdered Mari- 


HEROD. 


527 


amne, and recalled from banishment his first wife and her son. 
The two children of Mariamne were guilty of possessing Asmo- 
nean blood, and this being an offence which the Edomite could 
never forgive, after long strife, he obtained permission of the Ro- 
man power to put these young men to death, and they were ac- 
cordingly strangled at Sebaste. 

Among other deeds which aroused the abhorrence of the Jews, 
Herod desecrated the tomb of David and Solomon, seeking for 
treasure which he supposed to be hidden there. He had heard a 
tradition that Hyrcanus, being in a great strait for money, had 
opened the tomb of David, and obtained a large amount of gold 
and jewels. 

Josephus says that when Herod opened the sepulchre, he found 
no money, but utensils and "furniture” of gold, and some "precious 
goods ” there laid up : these he carried away, and resolved to go 
farther into the mausoleum, even to the embalmed bodies of the 
monarchs : the report was that two of the guard who accompanied 
Herod to break open the sacred resting-place, were slain by flames 
that leaped out upon them, and the king fled in alarm. As a 
token of his fear, and an offering of his repentance, Josephus 
farther adds, that Herod built at the entrance of the tomb a monu- 
ment of white stone, on which he expended a large sum ; which 
monument is mentioned by Nicolaus of Damascus, though not the 
reason for its erection. 

The chronology of the life and death of Herod the Great fixes 
the birth of Jesus Christ at four years before the beginning of the 
present era. 

At this time Herod had fallen into disgrace at the Roman Court. 
An expedition of the king against Obdas, king of Arabia, had 
been so reported in the Eternal City as to rouse the indignation 
of Augustus, who would receive neither excuse nor explanation. 
The war of Herod against the kindred race — for through Esau 


528 


HEROD. 


the Idumeans were connected with the Arabs, and Herod himself 
claimed a nearer tie, for his mother was an Arabian — had nearly 
cost him his crown. 

As a token of his rage, Augustus reduced the kingdom of Herod 
to a Roman province, and obliged all the population to take an 
oath of allegiance to Csesar. Six thousand Pharisees refused this, 
and were fined for their contumacy ; a fine paid by Herod’s sister- 
in-law. 

It was the Roman custom at the enrolment, when the oath was 
administered, to exact a poll-tax of half a stater; to which all the 
males between the ages of fourteen and sixty-five, and women 
from the age of twelve to sixty-five, were afterwards subject. Thus 
we find Christ paying tax of one stater, miraculously provided, 
for Peter and himself, or, half a stater apiece. This enrolment 
and consequent poll-tax is that mentioned by Luke in his second 
chapter, which also aids us in fixing the birth of Christ as occur- 
ring about four years earlier than our ordinary manner of dating 
places it. 

At this time Herod was about seventy years of age, and had 
reigned nearly thirty-seven years. He was even now in the re- 
lentless grasp of his last illness. Disease, like death, shows no 
respect for the palaces of kings, and Herod was the prey of a ter- 
rible form of suffering, which the Almighty seems to have ap- 
pointed as the especial scourge of peculiarly vicious sovereigns. 

His horrible physical sufferings were aggravated by great men- 
tal anguish. For this there were various causes; he had all his 
life devoted his first thoughts to securing and retaining the friend- 
ship of the Romans; this he now seemed to have lost; Augustus 
was imposing restrictions and taxations which had not previously 
been laid upon the nation. 

His eldest son Antipater, the child of Doris, had been for some • 
time regarded as Herod’s heir ; this prince had been active in 


HEROD. 


529 


procuring the death of his half brothers by Mariamne, and had 
ever filled his parent’s ear with calumnies concerning his whole 
family and court; these whispers had often excited Herod to cruel 
rage, and had compassed the death of many prominent people : 
thus the king had brought on himself the intense hate of his 
family and subjects, and felt himself now without a friend. To 
crown all his domestic troubles, he found that Antipater himself 
was conspiring against him, and therefore cast the prince into 
prison. 

The certainty that the nation would at his death break into a 
tumult of joy, so wrought upon the distracted king that he gave 
Salome the famous order to collect at Jericho the heads of the 
loftiest families of the Jewish nation, and put them to death as 
soon as he had breathed his last, that his expiring sigh might be 
accompanied by a wail of agony from all the land, and that Herod 
might ever be remembered by the Jews with tears. 

Salome collected the chiefs of Israel as desired, but released 
them as soon as her brother died, having no interest in perform- 
ing his last request, and being afraid of exasperating the nation. 

Another cause of Herod’s mental anguish was the earnest 
expectation of the immediate advent of Messiah, the King, for 
whom the Jews had waited so long, and who had become the 
“ Desire of all nations.” 

Herod, sharing the popular idea of those among whom he had 
been ' reared, expected a temporal Prince, of Universal sway. 
Though he had little family affection, and had murdered three of 
his own children, Herod had a proud wish to be the founder of a 
royal line, and was terrified at the thought of a Prince who should 
wrest the sceptre from the Idumean family ; he was prepared to 
contest the sovereignty with any claimant, rashly ignoring the 
belief, that the Coming One was to wield in his human arm the 

strength of Almighty God. 

34 


530 


HEROD. 


Gentile nations, free from the national interests and prejudices 
of the Jews, clung with less tenacity to the dream of a temporal 
dominion and an earthly monarch, and were more ready than the 
seed of Jacob to acquiesce in a first advent of humiliation and 
vicarious suffering. 

Here we have called especially to mind the expectancy of the 
nations; they stood watching for the foretold appearance of the 
Wonderful, the Counsellor, David’s Son, on whose shoulders the 
government should be laid. 

The dispersion of Israel, and the long captivity of Judah, were 
God’s appointed means for scattering abroad the knowledge of 
Messiah, and making Him, as foretold, the “ Desire of all nations.” 

While Daniel had been in Babylon, the Lord had especially 
made known to him the date of the Bethlehem Advent, “ Seventy 
weeks,” that is, prophetic weeks. 

This was not a divine secret, and there can be no doubt that 
Daniel made it known to those magians, or astrologers, of whom 
he was Rab-Mag, i. e., governor. These Magi must be particu- 
larly distinguished from sorcerers or wizards ; the Persian Magi 
were a learned body, first of astronomers. These receiving 
Daniel’s instructions, looked forward to the Coming One, and in 
their sacred writings called him Sosiosh, whose mission would be 
to bring in “ Life everlasting, forever existing, forever vigorous; 
at the time when the dead shall return to life.” 

The Persians preserved such hope from Noah ; they had learned 
Baalam’s prophecy of the “ Star out of Jacob ; ” and were yet 
further taught by Daniel. The hour prophesied had come ; their 
souls trembled with hope; they beheld in Pisces, the chief con- 
stellation of the Judean quarter of the celestial map, that wonder- 
ful astronomical phenomenon of which Kepler tells us, when three 
successive conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn pointed to the birth 
of a new star in Heaven, the Star of the King of the Jews. 


HEROD. 


531 


In the year of Rome, 747, these celestial tokens held the breath- 
less attention of the Babylonian Magi : “ that golden circle of 
auspicious fire ” was the homage of the skies to the New Star, 
which suddenly blazed forth, and the long watching and expecting 
Magi accepted the sign, being men of devout faith and simplicity, 
believed the Lord, and set out to seek a king. Thus the Magi, 
whose emblem of office w r as the subtle serpent, fulfilled the word 
of the Lord to our first parents, and came to fall beneath the feet 
of the “ Seed of the Woman.” 

But not alone in Chaldea, in the far East, did they expect the 
Jehovah-Christ — though by his name they knew him not. 
Tacitus tells us, that at this time it had been understood from the 
Oracles that now Syria should prevail over the world ; and one 
going out of Palestine should obtain the Empire - — “ prof edique 
Judsea rerum potirentur.” (Tac. Hist. v. 13.) 

Suetonius (in Vita Yespas. iv.) says: “ Fate had decreed that 
one going from Judea should rule the world,” using exactly 
similar words to Tacitus, and referring them to Vespasian and 
Titus. 

This expectation took deep root in the hearts of poets, and 
blossomed into song. 

Virgil, writing forty years before Christ, seems to rise to the 
dignity of a prpphet, and uses language almost identical with that 
of inspired Hebrews. Expecting a Deliverer, he beholds him in 
Pollio’s baby son, and sings his future. The noble Roman’s heir 
lived but nine days; but almost half a century later, the reputed 
son of Joseph came to accomplish the predictions of the Latin 
Master of the Art of Song. “ Now also justice returns, and the 
Saturnian kingdoms ; now a new race is sent down from heaven ; 
under whose sword the golden age shall rise over all the world. 
Thou being leader, if any traces of our sins remain, having 
been effaced they shall free the earth from a perpetual fear. He 


532 


HEROD. 


shall receive the life of the gods, and shall see heroes mingled 
with gods, and shall be seen by them. The serpent shall die , 
and every poisonous herb.” 

The poet further tells that in this child’s early days, peace and 
plenty shall begin ; they shall spread and increase as he grows in 
years, until at his maturity he shall stand a pure and glorious 
Potentate, with a thrice blessed world under his feet. 

The whole beautiful and wonderful passage is to be found in 
the fourth Eclogue of the Bucolics. 

In his poesy the Latin only expressed the general expectation 
of the world, Roman, Greek and Parthian. The Jews’ Scriptures 
had been much spread abroad ; the mystic words of prophets had 
been cherished, and the strange Sibylline oracles had uttered 
vague hints coinciding with them. Iran, Attica and Latium 
stood waiting hand in hand. 

Thus a universal expectancy preceded the birth of Jesus, the 
Son of God, and in its breathless waiting hush he came, fitly com- 
panied by a glorious New Star in heaven, and the hymning of the 
angelic host. 

The Eastern Magi, knowing that the expected Messiah had 
been looked for as an earthly ruler, very naturally sought him 
first in the capital of the nation, and in the palace and family of 
the king ; not knowing that the home of the dissolute Herod was 
the most unlikely place to find the “ Only Begotten of God.” 

While Herod was imprisoning his eldest son; multiplying 
embassies at Rome to set him right in the eyes of Augustus, and 
perplexing himself with schemes for a division of his realm 
among his heirs ; while he continually groaned in the tortures of 
his disease, which daily rendered him loathsome even to his 
meanest slaves ; while his wakeful night hours, and the labyrinths 
of his dreams, were vexed with spectres of murdered Mariamne 
and her sons, “ there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, 


HEROD. 


533 


saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews, for we have 
seen his star in the east, and have come. to worship him?” 

They were a notable delegation of very reverend men ; such 
men as had taught the Greeks astronomy ; as had stood on the 
tower of Belus, instructing young Daniel in the evolutions of the 
stars ; as had pored for centuries over the garnered wisdom of the 
philosophic east. From the arid noon of Chaldean plains, they 
travelled to the land of the Morning, where the Sun of Righteous- 
ness was to rise with healing in his golden rays; they brought the 
tribute of the sultry tropics to lay at the feet of the Master of 
W orlds ; gold burnished by the fires, and wrought in graceful 
filagree ; pressed into such solid wedges as had tempted Achan, 
gleaming in cups and bowls and vases of rare device; they 
brought myrrh from the fragrance-dropping forests of Araby, the 
blest ; and frankincense precious as gems, and sacred to divine 
worship. 

Thus laden with kingly gifts, and clad in costly raiment, fit 
for the presence of royalty, they traversed the streets of the Holy 
City, seeking a liege before whom to bend the knee, a shrine for 
the homage of the Gentiles as the prophet had sung, “And Gen- 
tiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy 
rising.” 

Such envoys were not to be passed over in silence ; camels and 
slaves, and precious gifts, and learned ambassadors, made no small 
stir in Jerusalem, while the magic question ran from lip to lip, ' 
“ Where is he that is born King of the Jews, for we have seen his 
star in the east and have come to worship him ? ” Zion then, as 
ever since, knew not her King ! 

The inquiry sped to the palace of that jealous, malicious, blood- 
thirsty sufferer, Herod. He woke to new energy ; craft must now 
precede bloodshed, and Idumean craft he used toward those devout 
and guileless worshippers of the Zend religion, on whom the Babe 


534 


HEROD. 


of Bethlehem was presently to smile new wisdom and everlast- 
ing life. 

Herod, cloaking his hate in zeal ; covering his crafty curiosity 
with the appearance of honest truth-seeking; garbing murder in 
homage, is a lesson to the world. 

Machiavelli of ancient times, Herod stands in evil contrast to 
the holy simplicity of the Magi. Herod the hypocrite is set be- 
side the faithful Wise Men. Hypocrisy is ever the shadow of 
faith ; it accompanies its march through time as the shadow dogs 
the substance, and it proves the existence of faith as the shadow 
proves the existence of a substance. When the reality comes, the 
shadow flies; thus hypocrisy flees affrighted before the majestic 
entrance of truth. 

With the statements of the Magi, and the answers of the San- 
hedrim, the murderous purpose of Esau awoke in the soul of his 
latest representative. “ I will slay my brother/' said Esau ; but 
divine grace conquered the cruel intention. Esau had outlived 
hatred in his own person, but bequeathed it with his blood to his 
posterity. 

Now all the noble traits of their sire seem eliminated from 
Edom; the purpose which the great ancestor had relinquished is 
born anew in Herod, and he resolves to kill his rival, the potent 
Infant of the House of David. 

All the old enmity is up in arms : light and darkness close in 
bloody duel ; now again the prophecy of Isaac was fulfilled, and 
the foot of the red brother pressed on the neck of the prince of 
prayer. 

The enormity of the crime of Herod is expressed in his desig- 
nation of the Child, as King of the Jews, and expressing a desire 
to “worship him also;” this shows his knowledge of the higher 
spiritual character and office of the new-born Prince; and a con- 
sciousness that he was fighting with the real Messiah. 


HEROD. 


535 


Around this child of Mary, Heaven and earth were moving : 
the centre of the universe lay on the knee of the carpenter’s wife ; 
and Herod, impersonating all the powers and aims of hell and 
darkness, lifted against the Sacred Babe an assassin’s knife. 

An angel from heaven interposed between the Child and danger 
a human shield, the royally descended carpenter of Nazareth. 
This holy man, obeying the voice of his angel Monitor, foiled the 
evil genius of Edom at every move. 

But now that the Beloved of the Father had fled from the 
wrath of the king, and in his helpless infancy taken refuge, as erst 
the race of Jacob, in the domains of Egypt, the life of his crowned 
persecutor was darkening to its close. 

The antagonism of the Maccabees and the Herodians, of Edom 
and Jacob, was ending now, because the field of strife was covered 
with the dead bodies of all the combatants but one. In this tragic 
contest Idumeans and Asmoneans had fallen until the shining line 
of Asmonias was extinct ; and Herod, having exterminated the 
hated race, found his own life ebbing to its close, while his sons 
were too weak and vicious to succeed to his power. 

It has been objected by some that the slaughter of the children 
at Bethlehem must be a fiction, because while Josephus heaps upon 
the head of Herod a thousand crimes, he does not mention this. 
We must consider that the massacre of these babes was over- 
shadowed by other incidents then occurring : Herod had collected 
at Jericho the nobles of the people, and was whetting his sword to 
take off their heads at a blow; and five days before his own death 
ordered the execution of his eldest born, Antipater. Horrible 
as was the edict which destroyed these little ones, flores mariyrum , 
as old Prudentius calls them in his poem, the number of the slain 
must have been small. Bethlehem was a very insignificant vil- 
lage ; the children murdered were from two years old and under, 
therefore but a small portion of the young children of the place. 


536 


IIEHOD. 


Thus the public attention, filled by so many tremendous scenes 
of bloodshed, was not especially attracted to this, over which the 
Bethlehem mothers wailed in sore anguish* and the sacred histo- 
rian pictures Rachel coming from her lowly grave, and weeping 
inconsolably for the slaughter of her latest born descendants. 

Even as the babes were murdered they were avenged, for the 
monster who doomed them lay rent by exquisite tortures ; his 
body disintegrating before he died ; racked by the power of an In- 
finite vengeance, the prey of the furies of remorse and despair, 
shrieking for a death which would only come when disease had 
torn him piecemeal ; keeping him conscious of his agonies until 
the last instant of his terrible existence. 

Type of sinners for all the ages, like Judas, chief among the ene- 
mies of Christ, his death is the picture of their unblessed end : 

“ Me miserable ! Which way shall I fly, 

Infinite wrath, and infinite despair ? 

Which way I fly is hell. Myself am hell ; 

And in the lowest deep, a lower deep, 

Still threatening to devour me, opens wide, 

To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.” 


i 



XXVII. 


PETER. 

THE EARTHLY AND THE HEAVENLY IMPULSE. 

« 0R the accomplishment of a great work, men demand great 
instruments. God magnifies his own power by the use 
of very humble means for mighty ends. The Lord of the 
~ Universe, when he would conquer the world to himself, 
when he set his battle in array against legions of devils, and their 
human agents, began the tremendous undertaking — by calling 
as his co-workers four fishers ! 

Jonas, a Galilean fisherman, dwelling on the fair shores of Lake 
Tiberias, had two sons, whom he had trained in the practices of 
the Jewish faith, in a careful obedience to the Law, and in a 
devout expectation of the Messiah. 

We speak of these men often, as “poor and ignorant fishermen,” 
but they were probably persons of some means and of reputable 
positions ; and while not learned after the fashion of the Scribes, 
the word “ignorant,” applied to them in Acts, means merely 
laymen — not doctors of the Law ; for it is evident that they were 
men of sound mind, wide experience, and the usual education and 
refinement of the middle classes of their day. 

The sons of Jonas having grown to manhood, entered into a 
business partnership with two brothers, like minded with them- 
selves, the children of Zebedee. The four owned several boats, 

and employed servants ; while Simon, the elder son of Jonas, was 

537 


538 


PETER. 


married, and lived with his family in his own house in the city 
of Capernaum. 

That this dwelling was no mean hovel, we learn from the fact 
that he was able to receive into it Jesus, and his attendant disci- 
ples ; while the open court in its centre accommodated many who 
thronged to hear and see the Great Master. 

When John came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and 
news of the man and his mission flew abroad, the four fishermen 
of Galilee were at once attracted toward him. 

It was characteristic of these men, and indicates the parental 
training which they had enjoyed, that they ever set the heavenly 
above the earthly interest. 

They heard of the Voice sounding an alarm in the desert, and 
at once sped to listen to the call to repentance ; to share the new 
baptism ; and do the works indicated by the prophet. 

They were enrolled among the most ardent followers of John, 
and their souls were fired with the announcement of the swift 
coming of Him for whom kings and seers had long waited. 
Expectation brightened in their eyes ; they eagerly scanned each 
strange face with breathless interest, and watched the opening 
glades, and the purple shadows of the Jordan hills, to see coming 
out of them that Man of Divine majesty, who should send the rod 
of his strength out of Zion. 

Andrew, the son of Jonas, and John, the son of Zebedee, per- 
haps as being younger than their brothers, and having less family 
cares, remained with the Preacher at the Jordan, and eagerly 
received his instructions. Here we see the tender family spirit, 
the community of interest among those men ; for the elder 
brothers returned to carry on the business needful for the support 
of the households, while the younger suffered nothing by remain- 
ing to learn at the feet of John. 

After a time, we find them all engaged at Tiberias on equal terms. 


PETER. 


539 


Jesus, immediately after his baptism, was “ led up into the 
wilderness,” where he remained for forty days, enduring that sore 
temptation laid upon him for our sakes. 

The day after his return, he appeared in the Jordan region near 
John, and the Baptist looking upon him, as in stately simplicity 
he pursued his solitary way, turned to a group of neophytes about 
him, saying: “ Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the 
sins of the world ! ” 

The words came with divine force to two listeners ; the hearts 
of Andrew and John leaped up to greet Him, who should amply 
supply all their need. The great crying want of their nature, 
which had never been appeased, could be met alone in One, who 
was potent to carry away the sins of the world. 

They sprang up, urged by the same impulse ; they stayed not 
to take farewells of him who had pointed out the way, they 
“ followed on to know the Lord.” 

As reverently they walked in his steps — and here is suggested 
how the following now entered upon continued through life, 
through the pains of death, and within the blissful walls of 
paradise — Jesus, knowing in his sympathetic soul the footfall of 
every seeker for his truth, turned, and radiant with benevolence, 
asked them : “ What seek ye ? ” 

The two made answer meekly, “ Rabbi, where dwellest thou ? ” 

He dwelt in every heart like theirs, contrite and desiring; but 
he would show them his earthly abiding place. Prince at his birth 
of outcast and homeless babes ; Prince in his youth, of all who 
daily grow in grace ; Prince in the wilderness, of all sore tempted 
souls, he is now the goodly Prince of hospitality, and bids them 
to his home. 

The Syrian day was stooping to its close; fresher came the 
breeze ; the languid flowers revived again ; wandering birds on 
weary wing were sweeping homeward ; longer lay the mountain 


540 


PETER. 


shadows ; the toiler cheered at the approach of rest, and through 
the evening peace, the dropping dews, the fold-bound flocks, 
Andrew and John went to the home of Jesus. 

« 

Who can fully comprehend the glorious revelations, the deep 
soul satisfying of that sojourn in the dwelling of the Christ? It 
quickened all the soul of each of these earliest disciples of the 
Redeemer. The heaven-love enlarged and purified the earth-love. 
Listening to the voice of Him who spake as never man spake, 
fraternal affection tugged at the heart of Andrew ; his joy could 
not be complete unless his elder brother, whose ardent spirit had 
protected and inspirited his childhood, could with him listen, 
learn and love. 

When these guests were dismissed from the home of Jesus, to 
pursue the duties of the hour, Andrew had but one thought, he 
must bring Peter to Christ. 

Homeward he sped with eager feet, and the toilsome way seemed 
nothing, so great was his earnestness ; he entered the house of 
Simon, and seizing on his brother with oriental passion, cried : 
“ We have found the Christ ! ” 

It had been the dream of their early years, to see the coming 
of Messias. Often, as they toiled through the long night watches, 
they had talked of Him who should rend heaven and come down ; 
often resting on the low green slopes that were mirrored in 
Gennesaret, they had pursued the favorite theme of welcoming 
the King of Jewry. 

No sooner did the ardent Andrew cry out that now at last 
Messias was found, than Simon, the man of impulse, had girt his 
cloak about him, and buckled on sandals for the journey. His 
hot haste outstripped his brother; Andrew then as ever, had much 
ado to keep pace with Peter. 

Happy in the fulfilment of his dearest hopes, Andrew brought 
his brother to Jesus ; then Simon received his new name. He had 


PETER. 


541 


justified his first appellation, Simon, the hearer ; he had heard 
John Baptist and Andrew right willingly, now he hears Christ, 
and his whole glowing soul casts itself at the feet of his Beloved. 
“ Thou shalt be called Cephas — Peter, a rock,” said Christ. 

It was long ere Simon made his new name good ; but the hour 
came when he was unflinching as a rock, and all the dashing 
storms of heathen rage, and spiritual conflict, could not shake his 
steadfast spirit. 

The succeeding day Jesus called to him one Philip, a man of 
Bethsaida, a townsman of Peter and Andrew, who was doubtless 
won into the circle of the new Teacher’s influence by seeing his 
early friends hanging on every word the Master spoke. Nathanael 
was the fifth recruit, and on the next day Christ and these his 
companions and students were invited to that forever famous wed- 
ding feast in Cana, than which never feast had guests more noble. 
Here the human tenderness of Jesus, his sympathy with human 
joys as well as griefs, shone forth most gloriously ; and in the 
manifestation of his supernatural power, the God stood confessed, 
and the new-fledged faith of his disciples mounted up suddenly 
as borne on eagle’s wings into the heights of divine mysteries. 

The principal home of Jesus during the brief period of his 
ministry was in Capernaum, and thither he went accompanied by 
his mother, probably now widowed, his brethren — whom in spite 
of Romish commentators, and even orthodox German savants, we 
must consider absolutely brethren according to the flesh — and his 
disciples. 

Here the four fishermen were at home, and for a time resumed 
their ordinary avocations, and dwelt in their own households. 

We pause to note that Peter had three calls from Christ. 
First, led by Andrew, he was called as a simple catechumen ; a 
follower or adherent in the most general sense. Second : his call 
from the nets to be a companion and constant attendant of the 


542 


PETER. 


Lord ; and, third, Peter was with eleven others formally chosen 
and commissioned to be a co-worker, a teacher of Christ’s doc- 
trines, his witness even unto a bloody death. 

Of all the disciples, none loved so much as this hot tempered, 
impulsive, elder son of Jonas ; his affection for his Master was an 
enthusiastic passion, and his rash natural disposition led him in 
the earlier part of his history to show forth his devotion by ill- 
judged methods. When trial and failure, and suffering had tu- 
tored him, the earthly impulse was overcome by the heavenly, and 
Peter’s whole being was absorbed in the desire to bring the world 
to know and own his Lord. 

The family of Peter claims our attention for a moment. At 
the time of his introduction to Christ he was living in Capernaum, 
with his wife and her mother. The tradition is that his wife was 
named Perpetua ; that she had one daughter, and perhaps other 
children, and that she with her daughter suffered martyrdom. 
We know, from the writings of Paul, that Peter’s wife was one 
of the heroines of the faith ; that with pious zeal she accompanied 
her husband on his Apostolic mission ; and she probably, like the 
holy Priscilla, gave herself to instructing inquiring souls, and aiding 
in building up the Church. 

In age, Peter was probably but little in advance of his Master ; 
he is said to have died an old man, in the year sixty-four ; it is 
not likely that he was more than forty at the time of his call to 
follow Jesus. 

The Lord, having attended the Passover feast in Jerusalem, 
taught in Judea and Galilee, performed many miracles, and been 
rejected at Nazareth, came again to Capernaum, and walking forth 
on the sea shore saw the fishing boats of the sons of Jonas and 
Zebedee. Peter’s boat was nighest him, and its owners at once 
recognized Him whom they had accepted as their Master. 

“ Follow me,” said Jesus, looking kindly on the tired, bronzed 


PETER. 


543 


faces of the toilers, “ and I will make you fishers of men.” The 
brothers at once brought their boat to the shore to obey, but the 
Lord was pressed by a multitude who had followed him out of the 
city, burning with curiosity to witness his miracles, and to hear his 
wonderful teachings. Stepping into the boat, Jesus bade Peter 
push out from the shore, that he might be relieved from the pressure 
of the crowd as he taught. The discourse having ended, and the 
multitude returning to their homes, Jesus was not unmindful of 
the occupation of the sons of Jonas, and said to them : “ Launch 
out now into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.” 

“ Master,” replied Peter, “ we have toiled all night and have 
taken nothing. Nevertheless at thy command I will let down 
the net.” 

Peter expressed his unbelief ; he would obey as a duty, as a 
token of respect, but he believed that it would be useless, and felt 
secretly that he knew best about fishing on Tiberias. Therefore 
when a miraculous draught of fishes burdened the nets, so that 
they broke with the treasure, Simon was overcome with a sense 
of his own unbelief, of his unworthiness to receive such favors, 
and of the great benevolence of Jesus towards him. Thus often 
does the bounty of the Lord rebuke our lack of faith. 

Beckoning to their partners, James and John, in the other ship, 
the fishers proceeded to lade their vessels with the treasure ; the 
wonderful store filled both craft to the brim, and they were ready 
to sink. The impulsive Peter cast himself at the feet of Jesus, 
with the amazing prayer : “ Depart from me, for I am a sinful 
man, O Lord.” 

Peter had seen the miracle at Cana, and had believed, but had 
not been impressed as by this miracle, which he could thoroughly 
appreciate as being with his own nets in his own calling and boat, 
following his own fruitless efforts. He remembers how though 
he has seen^Christ’s glory manifested, he has yet left him and re- 


544 


PETER. 


tured to his own labors, and here is this amazing bounty poured 
out for him ! He cries “ depart ” because the presence of Christ 
so reproves the sinfulness in his own soul, and he feels unjvorthy 
of his friendship. “ I am not worthy that thou shouldst come 
under my roof,” is his heart cry. But here is shown how men 
do not choose Christ, but he chooses them. While Peter with 
trembling hand waved the Lord away, that Lord answering the 
yearning of the man’s spirit drew nearer. “ Fear not ; from hence- 
forth thou shalt catch men.” His merciful words fell like oil on 
the troubled tossing waters of Peter’s soul, and his brother and 
friends, who have shared his awed, excited feelings, now share his 
devotion, and ' at once they follow Jesus to the city, leaving 
parents, property and servants; forsaking all to follow Jesus. 

Peter now received his Master to his dwelling, and for some 
little time the Lord remained in Capernaum; while here he exer- 
cised his power in behalf of Peter’s mother-in-law, who lay ill of 
a fever ; upon her he laid such potent and life-bestowing touch, 
that she rose up well, and following the instincts of the renewed 
soul, devoted her first strength to laboring for her Benefactor. 

Not long after this, Peter received his third call, this time to 
the Apostolic office. Here, for whatever reason, he was set primus 
inter pares ; he became first of the Apostles, not having been first 
called, and probably not being eldest of all ; but from this time 
Peter is set first on each list of the Apostles ; is named first of the 
favored trio called to share most notable experiences, and is at all 
times regarded as mouthpiece and representative of the rest. Paul, 
on several occasions, mentions Peter as chief or exponent among 
his brethren ; and Jesus frequently addresses him personally, while 
directing his speech to all the twelve. At the same time, Peter 
evidently holds no peculiar office; receives no special honors from 
his brethren ; has no grand privileges, and the rule of his Master 
is : “ He that is chief let him serve, and he that would be greatest, 
let him be the servant of all.” 


PETER. 


545 


Among his Apostles, Jesus chose three whom he brought into 
most tender relations to himself: Peter, the most loving; John, 
the best beloved, and James, the critical and careful, the keeper 
of the law, and the calm reasoner, who could balance the impul- 
sive Peter and the fiery John. 

These were with the Lord in three grand scenes of his life : 
the raising of Jairus’ daughter ; the Transfiguration, and the Agony 
in Gethsemane. 

To appreciate more fully his ardent nature, it may be well 
first to group his sayings, and then his recorded doings, until the 
night when our Lord was betrayed. 

When Peter sees Jesus walking on the sea, he cries out : “ Lord, 
if it be thou, bid me to come to thee on the water ! ” 

, He gives his Master a test, and with eager love would go to 
meet him on that watery way. Having leaped from the ship, he 
suddenly realizes his position, remembers that man cannot walk 
on tossing waves, and seeing the wind boisterous, his mercurial 
spirits sink, and he sinks with them. He forgets the power of 
Christ, and considers only his own incapacity. He is afraid. 

As he fears, he falls ; his doubts are as a millstone about his 
neck ; yet fearing, doubting, he does not lose the consciousness 
that in his Lord is his only hope; he may have been a strong 
swimmer, brought up from infancy by the shining sea, but he 
trusts the hand of Jesus, rather than stout strokes from his own 
sinewy arm, and shouts, “ Lord ! save me ! ” 

We have Peter in his happiest phase of character, when Christ 
asks his disciples : “ Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, 
am?” • 

The Apostles reply promptly, giving the different rumors and 
opinions current among the Jews. 

“ But whom say ye that I* am?” demands the Master. 

Peter, ever the spokesman of the twelve, ardently declares: 

35 


546 


PETER. 


“Thou art the Christ: the Son of the living God.” Here 
Peter affirms that Jesus is Messiah, and being enlightened by the 
Spirit recognizes him not in any narrow and carnal sense of 
Jewish tradition, but in his true mission and person. His reply 
is solemn, heartfelt, and rich with a knowledge of the divine 
mystery of the God incarnate. 

In this declaration Peter lays the foundation of the Christian’s 
confession of faith ; here is the beginning of the Apostles’ Creed. 
He confesses Jesus as True Man, Eternal Son of God, and 
Almighty Redeemer of a lost world. In his simply worded 
answer is held that spiritual reliance which is the Christian life 
of the Church. 

“Blessed art thou, Simon, son of Jonas,” saith the Master; 
“ for flesh and blood have not revealed it unto thee ; but my 
Father which is in heaven.” 

It is to this faithful confession, made by Peter, that Christ 
refers, when he says : “ On this rock I will build my Church.” 
The bold, unlimited allegiance expressed by Peter, was to be the 
foundation of the Church. Christian faithfulness is that whereon 
the Church rests, and may abide the shock of onset from her foes. 

It is a peculiarity of Peter, the impulsive, that when he has 
reached some lofty height he speedily plunges to some awful 
depth, as if made giddy by the elevation he has attained. Now 
having been the crowning type of holy confession and devotion ; 
expressing, in acceptable speech, the noblest feelings of his 
brother Apostles, Simon Peter strangely yields to carnal ambition, 
and Jewish traditionalism, and would rob his Lord of his chiefest 
glory, that for which he came into the world. 

Christ began to prepare the minds of his disciples for that 
decease which he must accomplish at Jerusalem ; showing them 
that he would be obedient even unto alfloody death. 

Only by this death could Peter gain admission to the gates of 


PETER. 


547 


everlasting life. This the sanguine Apostle cannot see; his human 
love overcomes him ; he seizes on his Lord, and rebukes him. 

“ Be it far from thee, Lord ! This shall not be unto thee ! ” 

Satan is ever ready to seduce those who have been most highly 
exalted. Here he prompts Peter to put himself forward to for- 
feit, if possible, the world’s Salvation. He would have Peter 
hinder that wonderful expiatory offering, whereby a man may be 
just with God. 

Jesus rebukes the rash man, and the Satanic element at work 
in his soul. “ Get thee behind me, Satan. Thou art an offence 
unto me ; for thou savorest not the things which be of God, but 
those that be of men.” 

The earthly impulse had suddenly gained the ascendant ; the 
heavenly principle drooped and fainted on the ungenial soil of this 
half-regenerated heart. 

Peter seems inclined to play the mentor to his Lord ; for on the 
way to the house of Jairus, when Jesus demands : “ Who touched 
me?” Peter says, bluntly, “ Master, the multitude throng thee \ 
and press thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me?” 

With Christ and the sons of Zebedee, Peter stood in the house 
of the ruler of the synagogue, and saw the banished life recalled 
to his young daughter; saw the blood flush the cheek lately 
frozen into marble ; saw the eyes unclose with a new love light ; 
saw the parents, breathless at this miracle of transformation, 
receive their child strangely aroused from the sleep of death. 

Favored again to behold mysteries, Peter was one of those who 
“saw His glory being with him on the holy mount.” 

There he beheld the celestial radiance of the only begotten Son 
of God ; there he saw Moses, the hero of his nation’s history, and 
Elijah, tl?e mysterious prophet, who broke upon his people like 
light out of chaos, and left them being swept up toward highest 
heaven in a whirlwind and chariots of fire. 


548 


PETER. 


It was Peter’s misfortune to be heavy with sleep on occasions 
when he needed to be all alert. How long that glorious interview 
had been going on, he knew not ; celestial light aroused him, and 
his dull eyes beheld the 'Church on earth in the persons of him- 
self and the two brothers, met by the Church of the Redeemed in 
heaven, Jesus fitly standing hi the midst, but now all glowing 
with supernal sheen, covered with His glory who dwelleth in the 
light inaccessible. The law; the prophets; the gospel, the 
Church of the last dispensation, met on that unnamed mountain. 

At once Peter fires with enthusiasm ; he forgets his nine brother 
apostles, less favored ; he even forgets Andrew, who brought him 
to Jesus; and all the struggling nation of the Jews, and a world 
trembling on the brink of ruin. All he desires is to dwell forever 
on that mount of bliss ; to see his Lord so unspeakably fair ; to 
behold those glorified faces, whose lineaments tradition had well 
preserved, to hear those sounds of melody, to be by that divine 
nimbus, shut apart from the sins and troubles of the world. 
“ Lord,” he cries, speaking unchallenged his opinion, “ let us 
make three tabernacles — one for thee, one for Moses, one for 
Elias ! ” And alas, even as he speaks, the splendid vision melts 
away. A shining cloud, like the pillar of fire which guarded the 
hosts of Israel, or the Shekinah which descended, upon the mercy 
seat, hid from the anxious eyes of the disciples those three glorious 
forms. Chill fear fell on them ; they seemed to have lost their 
Lord; his earthly appearance had been so clothed upon with 
celestial beauty, that, perhaps, it was a token of his withdrawal, 
that he would no more “ walk the rough ways of the world by 
their side.” Falling prostrate, their souls cried out for light, 

“And had no language hut a cry.” 

Suddenly, how soon they could not tell, Jesus touched them, 
saying: “ Fear not.” They rose; the celestial guests were gone; 
their Master, in his dusty sandals and seamless robe, and grave 


PETER. 


519 


majestic face, alone was there ; the world went on, as before that 
amazing hour. They had “ Jesus only,” but Jesus was enough, 
and they went down from the mountain carrying blessing to the 
world. 

The months of sanctifying intercourse and training in the earthly 
school of Christ rolled on, and brought the warm-hearted, impe- 
tuous Peter to the great agony, the great sin, the great repentance 
of his life. 

Peter and John were the two disciples sent to make ready for 
that last solemn passover, when Christ was to institute the new 
memorial of his dying love for his Church in all the ages to 
come. 

Even their long association with the Prince of the meek had not 
humbled the aspiring, haughty natures of the twelve ; they fre- 
quently contended for preeminence, and only the great distress and 
soul-rending of their loss of their Master chastened and purified 
those rebellious spirits. 

Tribulation means threshing ; and it takes great tribulation often 
to divide the chaff from the corn in many a strong soul. In 
taking their places at the feast the apostles contended for chief 
seats, perhaps jealous of John who sat next thq Master. Jesus 
began, as often before, to teach them the beauty of humility, the 
need of entire harmony, showing that they would be in the world 
•a little band of brothers, against whom earth and hell would wage 
bitter warfare. Let them then find solace in each other’s love, and 
in the Master’s service. To enforce this lesson, Christ arose from 
his place at the board, and girded himself to perform for his dis- 
ciples the office of the meanest slave. “ If I, then, your Lord and 
Master, wash your feet, so ought ye also to wash one another’s 
feet,” was the moral of the act. 

Peter’s loving soul revolted from the thought of such humiliation 
for his Lord : “ Dost thou wash my feet ? ” he cries. 


550 


PETEK. 


“ What I do Ihou knowest not now, but thou shalt know here- 
after,” replied Jesus. 

Looking at the matter with his merely human vision Peter 
could not be reconciled to it, and returned: “ Lord, thou shalt 
never wash my feet ! ” 

“ If I wash thee not, thou hast no part in me,” said Jesus. No 
part in Christ ! Peter could not endure that imputation ; and so 
dashing to another extreme, he runs beyond the intention of Jesus, 
exclaiming : “ Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my 
head.” 

The little band sat down to supper. 

“ One of you shall betray me,” said the sorrowful Christ. On 
every lip trembled the question : “ Lord, is it I ? ” 

But Peter could not be content, he must know the traitor’s 
name ; perhaps he intended to run him through with his sword. 
Simon therefore beckoned to his friend John to ask who should 
betray so good a Master ; Jesus gave the sign, and said : “ He to 
whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it.” 

The food before them was the roasted paschal lamb, the cakes 
of unleavened bread, the wine, and the harosheth , a gravy made 
of bitter herbs pounded together, as a token of Israel’s bitter bond- 
age, and brickyard toil in Egypt. According to Oriental custom, 
each person at the table dipped his piece of bread into the dish, 
and Judas doubtless stretched forth his false hand to the harosheth 
at the same moment that the Lord did so. 

In the East it is courteous in the master of a feast to give a frag- 
ment of food which he himself has dipped in or from the dish to 
one of his guests. Jesus, ever gracious, even on this night terrible 
with the culmination of the world’s long agony, dipped a sop of 
the paschal bread and gave it to Judas. 

The traitor looked up, and met the steady soul-searching gaze 
of the Master. 


PETER. 


551 


“ What thou doest, do quickly,” said our Saviour. 

One not entirely possessed of the devil would have cast himself 
at Jesus’ feet, imploring for himself pardon and protection; but 
Judas rose and left the spot hallowed by the presence of the 
Saviour. The departure of Judas concluded the Passover supper, 
and now came the hour when Peter thrice protested his undeviat- 
ing allegiance to Him whom he was thrice to deny. While Jesus 
spoke as one departing, Peter demanded: “Lord, whither goest 
thou?” 

“ Whither I go thou canst not follow me now,” was the reply. 

“ Lord, why cannot I follow thee now ? I will lay down my 
life for thy sake ! ” cried the man of impulse. 

“ Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake ? ” said Jesus sadly. 
“ Verily, verily I say unto thee, the cock shall not crow before 
thou hast denied me thrice.” 

Then Peter spoke the more vehemently : “ Although all men 
should be offended, yet will not I ; if I should die Avith thee, I 
would not deny thee in any wise.” 

To this agreed the other apostles, who were listening eagerly to 
Peter’s reclamation. They none of them believed that ardent Peter, 
their leading spirit, their spokesman, could deny a Lord whom he 
assuredly loved ; neither did Peter believe th&t such falsehood 
was in him. But Christ repeated his words : “ Verily, I say 
unto thee, that this day, even on this night, before the cock crow 
twice thou shalt deny me thrice. Simon, Simon, behold Satan 
hath desired to have thee that he may sift thee as wheat ; but I 
have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not : and when thou art 
converted, strengthen thy brethren.” 

Here is predicted to Peter an outward and visible change ; the 
burgeon of an inward renewal of his soul ; through what flood- 
tides of spiritual agony he was to struggle to this safety, Christ 
wisely hides from him ; on this very night the mighty process is to 


552 


PETER. 


begin ; for three days of anguish, which would have destroyed a 
weaker nature, Peter is to battle with his soul’s enemy; for Jong 
days of temptation, and almost failure, he is to strive, until on 
Olives he reaches his height of spiritual strength, becomes in 
his 'earth-life the strengthener of his brethren, and by his epistles 
the strengthener of the faithful in all the years to come. 

Now he says resolutely, knowing so little of his weakness- 
“ Lord, I am ready to go with thee to prison, and to death.” 

“ I tell thee, Peter,” replies Christ earnestly, “ the cock shall 
not crow this day before thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest 
me.” 

Thrice warned, thrice protesting, with full confidence in his 
Own strength,. Peter was thrice to fail. 

And now the Memorial supper was given, the Lord’s last legacy 
to his Church, established in deep tribulation, and ever to main- 
tain herself amid warfare and woe, indeed to need these to make 
her graces thrive, and her expectation to be eager for her King’s 
return. 

Next followed that closing and comforting discourse given in 
John ; the prayer of the departing Saviour ; and that solemn hymn 
of praise that woke the night echoes of the Holy City. 

Out then into the starlight ; across the brook Kidron, up into 
beloved and ever-sorrowful Gethsemane. Having entered the 
garden, Jesus left eight of the apostles, and taking the- favored 
three, Peter, James and John, went farther into the recesses of 
the shade ; here He was indeed to be the Burden Bearer of the 
world, to carry on his breaking heart that load of sins which had 
shut men out from their heavenly Father. 

Here Christ faces the whole traitorous despairing world, in the 
person of Judas; behind it the infernal powers lie waiting to aid 
it, an abyss of wickedness, before which the spotless Son of the 
Father “ is sore amazed and very heavy.” Around him the poor, 


PETER. 


553 


lost, despairing impotent human race, finds its representatives in 
those three chosen companions, who, in Christ’s hour of agony, 
are asleep ! 

Rising from his struggle of prayer, Christ seeks his friends ; 
all, even the boastful elder born of Jonas, slumber. He speaks 
to Peter : “ Simon ! sleepest thou ? couldst thou not watch one 
hour? Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation.” 
Thrice warned, Simon is again shown the way of escape. And 
now how pitifully his Master regards his weariness : “ The spirit 
truly is willing, but the flesh is weak.” 

A second time he comes to them, and still they sleep, and 
rubbing drowsy eyes know not what to answer his gentle up- 
braiding. 

The third time he comes; the Peter who could go to prison is 
slumbering still. “ Sleep on now, and take your rest. Behold 
the hour is come, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands 
of sinners.” 

There is a sudden sound of trampling feet, of clashing swords, 
and shouts of armed men. The moon has risen, and lights up 
the’scene as with a new day ; the Apostles, who have been left, arc 
flying from the shadows towards their Master. 

Peter, the impulsive, is up and alert now ; he snuffs the battle 
like a war horse; he can endure a fair fight; slow legal processes 
and legitimate crucifixions are what Peter cannot brave. 

The armed bands come nearer. Judas at their head. The 
arch-traitor, with ostentatious homage, says : “ Hail, Master, 
Master,” and gives to Christ a treacherous kiss. 

At this, some of the band pushing forward, laid violent hands 
on Jesus. 

Peter being girt with a sword, flamed into defence of his Lord. 
He lifted his bright blade to hew off the head of the offender, but 
missing his mark in his haste, only succeeded in cutting off his 


554 


PETER. 


adversary’s ear. The man was a servant of the High Priest, and 
Jesus saying, calmly : “ Suffer ye thus far,” touched his ear, and 
healed him. 

The Lord then said to Peter : “ Put up thy sword into its place : 
for all they that take the sword, shall perish with the sword.” 

Peter, thus forbidden his weapon, began to tremble. 

“ Whom seek ye ? ” asked Jesus of the armed men. 

“ Jesus of Nazareth,” was the reply. 

“Pam he.” 

At these words, smitten by an invisible hand, the battalion 
went backwards, and fell to the ground. 

When Christ had refused Peter’s chivalrous defence, and had 
intimated that he should not ask of his Father legions of angels, 
Peter’s heart had sunk; now he revives, thinking the Master 
about to exercise his divine power. On the contrary, the Saviour 
offers himself to his foes as a lamb led to the slaughter ; and they 
begin to bind him. He speaks : “ If ye seek me, let these go 
their way.” “ Then all the disciples forsook him anil fled.” 

They were not the last followers who should forsake their 
Lord ! 

Peter and John followed Christ afar off, until he was taken into 
the High Priest’s palace. Being known to the household, John 
went in» with his Master and the accompanying crowd, while 
Peter remained shivering without, his fears rapidly gaining 
ascendancy over him. 

John, the thoughtful and brotherly, presently missed his old 
friend, and speaking to the portress gained him admission. 

Now a frivolous servant maid turned the lately valorous Peter 
into a miserable catiff. As he stood near the door, the damsel 
said, inquisitively, “Art thou not one of this man’s disciples ? ” 

“ I am not,” retorted Peter, the earthly impulse swaying all his 
soul. 


* 


PETER. 555 

He then went out to the porch ; but young damsels seemed 
combined to torture him, and show him at his worst ; for a maid 
servant, seeing him in the crowd, said officiously to the bystand- 
ers, “ This is one of them,” meaning the comrades of the Prisoner. 

Then Peter denied again; and in despair took refuge among a 
circle of men, standing about a brazier of coals. 

As he tried to converse on indifferent matters, one of his com- 
panions said, roughly : u Surely, thou art one of them. For thou 
art a Galilean, and thy speech betrayeth thee.” 

Housed to all his early unregenerate passions, Peter began 
loudly to curse and to swear, crying : “ I know not this man of 
whom ye speak.” 

Oh, cruel forsaking and denial in the hour of extremity ! 

Peter’s traitorous eyes wandered into the adjacent hall, and 
there he saw his loving, long forgiving Master, at the mercy of 
his enemies. 

At that moment Jesus turned and gave his recreant friend one 
long look of love, of pity, of upbraiding, and forgiving. 

Suddenly came the sign, the crowing of the cock. 

All the scenes of vehement protestation, of warning, of stupid 
slumber, of betrayal, swept before the fisherman of Galilee. 
False, false, false ! brother to Judas! his Lord knew that he had 
forsaken One who had ever been true to him. 

An agony of remorse and shame, such as weaker men may 
never know, shook the Apostle’s soul. He fled from the scene of 
his treachery, and going forth into the- cold gray morning wept 
passionately. 

The tardy day broke over Olivet ; its first red beams beheld 
the world’s great penitent, the Christian who had denied his 
Christ; a culprit convulsed with self-accusation, flying to some 
lonely hiding-place, where he might give wa y to his anguish. 

Here we lose sight of Peter for three days. While Christ 


556 


PETER. 


suffers and is buried, this representative man is buried from our 
sight; while Jesus is crucified, Peter is crucified to £he world and 
to his fears, and when Christ appears from his grave, Peter walks 
forth in newness of life. 

He hears in his retirement the shouts of the frantic multitude ; 
he hears the tumult of the mob sweeping toward Calvary; his 
face blanches in the sudden darkness of that doleful noon ; he 
trembles with the trembling of the shaken earth. 

Night closes in, and now it is likely that a comfortable guest 
finds the frantic Peter; for we know that John and Peter were 
together on the morning of the first day of the week ; that John 
had a house at Jerusalem, where he took Mary, the very hour 
that a sword had pierced through her soul in the dying agonies of 
her Son. 

Perchance then, John, mindful of his beloved friend ; pitying 
him with something of the Saviour’s compassion, sought him to 
share his woe. 

He tells him that Judas has “ gone to his own place;” that 
torn with despair, he flung the price of his soul in the face of the 
Sanhedrim, and going out hanged himself. 

The breathless Peter hears of the converted thief and centurion ; 
and that out of their graves had walked the bodies of many dead 
saints, and had paced with soundless feet their accustomed haunts 
in the Holy City. 

Thus for two nights, and a still Sabbath day, Peter and John 
and Mary, and, perhaps, other friends of Jesus, linger together, 
filled with but one theme — discoursed with floods of tears — the 
death of Jesus, and his burial rites, that precious treasure hidden 
in the sepulchre in a garden. 

On that glorious Easter morning, Christ, ever most tender to 
bruised and repenting souls, sends by the angels an especial mes- 
sage to Peter: “ Go tell his disciples and Peter, that he goeth 
before you into Galilee.” 


PETEPw. 


557 


But meantime Mary Magdalene, finding the tomb untenanted, 
has run to Peter and John with the news: the two make speed to 
see if the sacred depository has been vifled ; and Peter, ever more 
daring than John, pushes by him, who merely stoops down and 
looks in, and boldly enters the tomb. 

That same day, as we learn from Paul, Jesus appeared to Peter, 
to receive him again into favor, binding up his broken heart. 

At once Peter re-assumes the leadership. In the excess of his 
joy, he is able to brave anything; that look in the judgment hall 
no longer haunts him like an accusing angel ; it is remembered 
rather as rich in compassion, and pardon. 

As appearances of his Lord are multiplied, Peter rises to an 
ecstasy ; but now comes a period of silence : the apostles are not at 
once met in Galilee by their Master; the Jews declare him dead; 
Mary Magdalene has seen -him ; two disciples at Emmaus have 
held long converse with him ; he has visited Peter ; he has stood 
twice among the twelve; but days have grown into weeks, and the 
Lord has not been heard from. 

Delay becomes an agony ; Peter can so ill endure idleness ; his 
active soul, like that of John, his earliest master, pines and chafes 
when there is nothing to be done. He has gone up to the sea of 
Tiberias, and with him are Thomas ; his old partners, James and 
John; Nathanael, their early friend, and two other of the twelve. 

Old associations revive old impulses; the placid lake is day 
after day dotted with the sails of the fishing boats : these men are 
poor, and their families may need their labor. True, they have 
been called to forsake all, and catch men ; but he, their Master, is 
gone, and there, is no one to lead them in the new work. 

Here Peter is besieged by a fresh temptation, more insidious 
than the one which overcame him in the judgment hall. 

This temptation also overtook him, as temptations often over- 
take men, because he was in the wrong place. 


558 


PETER. 


What business had Peter to be in his old-time haunts, in sight 
of the nets and the fish, and in hearing of the old choruses of the 
sea-toilers ? 

True, he had been told to go into Galilee, but not to Gennesa- 
ret; the appointment had been distinctly made by Christ to meet 
his Apostles on a mountain . 

As soon as Passover rites were ended, their duty was plain : to 
confer with no man, but to hasten unto that nameless Galilean 
mountain, there to keep their tryst with their risen Lord. 

With that stupidity which so eminently characterized the twelve, 
until after the descent of the Holy Ghost, they seem to have quite 
forgotten that a time and a place of meeting had been mentioned. 
Not time as to a day perhaps, but some near occasion had been 
expressed in the words of Jesus on the Passover evening, “After 
I am risen I will go before you into Galilee,” and the repetition 
of this phrase by the angels, “ Behold he goeth before you into 
Galilee ; ” and the message the risen Lord, on the Sabbath morn- 
ing, dispatched by the women, “ Go tell my brethren, that they go 
into Galilee ; there shall they see me.” In their surprise, sorrow 
and confusion, all this was lost. 

Worn with grief, fatigue, waiting, disappointment, poor Peter, 
in the wrong place by his own act, but ignorant of his error, doubts 
his Master, where he should blame himself. No very great poverty 
presses him to labor ; for three years his Master has supplied his 
need. It is unrest, rather than want ; lack of faith above every- 
thing which causes him to utter the phrase John deems so import- 
ant, “I go a fishing.” He might nearly as well say, “ I give 
up all.” 

Suppose Christ should never return, or should not come for 
years; there will be no harm in filling up the interval with the 
old business : at all events, Peter is sure he will die of this en- 
forced quiet. 


PETER. 


559 


He starts up : “ I go a •fishing.” He has run before his Lord’s 
stately progress again ; poor, hasty Simon ! Dangerously influ- 
ential, he causes his brethren to err. 

His word is the signal for the rest : “ We also go with thee.” 

They push the boats from shore, and set the sails to catch the 
evening breeze, and toiling until break of day they catch nothing; 
and now as the east grows red, they have drifted nearer shore, and 
see a lonely figure pacing on the sand. 

Clearly comes to them the challenge, “ Children, have ye any 
meat ? ” 

Alas ! no ; they have fished in wrong waters, as many men have 
done since. 

“ Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find.” 

When we work by the Lord’s direction, we work successfully. 
Now “ the net was laden with fishes many and great.” 

The miracle proclaimed the Master. “Many waters cannot 
quench love, neither can the floods drown it.” 

“ It is the Lord,” cried John. 

Peter, grasping his fisher’s coat, forthwith in headlong haste 
forsakes his comrades, and his Master’s new gift, and flings him- 
self into the sea, hating every instant, and buffeting every wave, 
that keeps him from the feet of his soul’s beloved. 

When the boat is at shore, and Jesus bids them bring of the 
newly caught fish, Peter flies to obey. Then the seven sat down 
to eat the food their Master had prepared. 

Now there is to be a formal remembrance of Peter’s sin, and an 
evident forgiveness. “ Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more 
than these ? ” 

“ Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee,” said Peter. 

“ Feed my lambs,” said the Great Shepherd of the flock. 

Again the question : “ Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?” 

“Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee,” said Peter, 


560 


PETER. 


appealing to Christ’s omniscience to believe him in spite of his 
false act. 

But when the third time the question came, Peter’s heart broke 
at the remembrance of that bitter denial, and grief overflowed his 
soul. 

“ Lord, thou knowest that I love thee.” 

“ Verily, verily, I say unto thee,” said Jesus, “When thou 
wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou 
wouldst: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth 
thine hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither 
thou wouldst not.” 

This prophecy of his martyrdom the Apostle received without 
terror; but true to his own impulsive nature, he turned to John, 
who, with the others, followed the steps of the Master, and de- 
manded : “ Lord what shall this man do ? ” 

Then Jesus cautioned this Peter, and all the other unduly 
anxious Peters of the Church, “ What is that to thee? Follow 
thou me.” 

Here closes the first part of Peter’s history. 

When the volume of his life opens again, we find him standing 
forth the chief of the Apostles on the Great Day of Pentecost. 
Since the ascension of Christ, Peter had taken the lead, had 
gathered the brethren together to wait in prayer and supplication 
the Promise of the Father; had led them in choosirig a new 
Apostle to take the place of lost Judas. 

On the Pentecostal day, Peter stands bravely forth preaching a 
crucified Jesus; exalting him who had suffered as a malefactor 
Without the gate. 

From this hour, we find the Apostle indeed strengthening his 
brethren ; being a man full of the Holy Ghost. 

With John he performs that notable miracle at the Gate Beauti- 
ful, and the ring of his. voice before the Sanhedrim, “ Whether it 


PETER. 


561 


be right in the sight of God, to hearken unto you more than unto 
God, judge ye : for we cannot but speak the things which we have 
seen and heard,” has very little of the tone of him who faltered : 
“ I know not the, man.” 

Twice is Peter released from prison by an angel’s hand : he 
cries to the chiding rulers, “ We ought to obey God rather than 
men.” 

So many signs and wonders was he enabled to perform, that the 
people carried their sick and deformed into the streets, that his 
shadow, as he passed along, might fall on them with healing 
power. 

Being thus as a ministering angel to the needy and the believing, 
he was as a scorching flame of wrath to the hypocritical and 
unbelieving. His shadow passing over the sick is full of refresh- 
ing, like that of a great rock in a weary land ; but from his lips 
leap consuming fires to smite Ananias and Sapphira. 

Peter stands among the Samaritan disciples, the harvest of his 
Lord’s sowing, and with tender recollections flooding his soul 
prays for them that they may receive the Holy Ghost ; but when 
Simon, the sorcerer, offers him money for powers like his own, he 
darts upon him the withering curse, “Thy money perish with 
thee ! I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and the 
bond of iniquity.” 

Eneas, healed of his palsy, which, for eight years, had held him 
in strong chains, arose to bless the son of Jonas. Endowed with 
a power like that of Christ and the greatest prophets, Peter calls 
back dead Dorcas from the “ undiscovered bourne.” 

To enfranchise his spirit, bound up in Judaism, God sends him 
a vision, and makes him his missionary to Cornelius. 

When Paul is converted, he seeks Peter on his first visit 
to Jerusalem, this being three years after he had confessed 
Christ. On this occasion Barnabas, probably a former friend, 
36 


562 


PETER. 


introduced him to Peter, with whom the new Apostle abode fifteen 
days. 

Having lost his beloved friend James by the sword of Herod, 
we find Peter shut up in prison, whence he is miraculously de- 
livered. 

After this event, we have no continuous history of this Apostle. 
Six years after his release from the power of Herod, Peter was in 
Jerusalem at an assemblage of apostles and elders, who were met 
to discuss matters important to the widely extending Church. 

Very many critics believe that the dispute between Peter and 
Paul, when the latter Apostle reproved his elder brother for dis- 
simulation in his dealings between Jews and Gentiles, took place 
at this time. 

And in this fact which Paul states, we see Peter, the real man, 
showing forth in all his individuality. At one time he walked 
freely and brotherly with the Gentile disciples at Antioch ; but 
when Judaizers came, he was carried away by their influence, and 
withdrew himself from his former friends. 

Paul admits that to Peter was committed “ the Gospel of the 
circumcision,” and calls him, w T ith James and John, “ pillars of 
the Church.” 

Concerning Peter’s life, after the Bible record of him ceases, we 
have only tradition and conjecture. He was certainly for a long 
while at Antioch, and for another unnamed period at Babylon — 
not the spiritual Babylon of Home, but the olden Babylon, still a 
flourishing seat of intellectual culture, and much frequented by 
Jews; many Jewish families having remained there since the 
Captivity. 

Early tradition associates Peter’s name with the foundation of 
the Church at Corinth ; and suggests that he, in a long tour, 
spread the Gospel through the countries of Asia. 

We come now to a long vexed question, the residence of Peter 


PETER. 


5G3 


at Rome. Out of this supposititious residence, error has made 
much capital. It has been the misfortune of the fiery-hearted 
Apostle, that his name and memory have been used as Standards 
for the Hosts of Sin. 

Fora time a boldly asserted falsehood was taken for fact; an 
immense religious fabric was built on the statement that Peter 
was at Rome; the time of his stay was particularly stated at 
twenty-five years; and his pontifical chair was exhibited as a 
proof like Joseph’s bloody coat, and was, like that coat, a proof 
of something which had never occurred. 

Even to-day, when noble Italian reformers dispute this question 
in the seven-hilled city, and rout the upholders of the idea of 
Peter’s abode there, learned Biblical writers among Protestants, 
such as Kitto, in his “ History of the Bible,” and Smith, in his 
“ Bible Dictionary,” assert the fable for truth. 

If we give up the idea that Peter was at Rome, we must also 
give up many very charming legends. We must forego the 
notion, that Peter and his daughter were whirled to the world’s 
capital in a fiery chariot, there to battle Simon Magus ; and all 
the other pretty fancies of the u Golden Legend.” We can no 
longer think that Peter, flying in fear of martyrdom along the 
Appian way, met his Lord u going to Rome, there to be crucified 
again.” 

Peter’s imprisonment with Paul ; the marks of his chain, the 
print of his hand and head worn in his cell’s wall, all must be 
relinquished as myths, if Peter was not at Rome ; but having 
ascertained, by unflinching chronology, that he could not possibly 
have spent twenty-five years in the Eternal City ; and his treasured 
chair being proven a Roman consular relic of a later day, wrought 
with pictures of the labors of Hercules, we also find that the story 
of his ever being at Rome, or dying there, is pure fabrication. 
Smith thinks it “a settled point, that he did not visit Rome 


564 


PETER. 


until the last year of his life;” s but that he then went there and 
was martyred. 

It is a much more fully settled point, that he never was at 
Rome at all. 

It is time that careful historical research was substituted for 
ornate tradition. We live in the resurrection time of the ages; 
the world is giving up its dead ; it is not the hour to keep truth 
buried, and for each new writer to cast stones on its grave, raising 
a mighty cairn. If our fathers slew the truth, it is not needful 
that we should build its sepulchres. Rather let it come forth cla,d 
in white robes, singing praises. 

The arguments against the statement that Peter was at Rome 
are not recondite dissertations, but are open to all ; here it is not 
needful to discuss them. One very pertinent objection is the utter 
silence of all the Epistles concerning any visitation of Peter to the 
city of the Caesars. Paul, the courteous, writing from Rome, 
carefully saluting and remembering every one, says nothing of his 
great brother soul, his pioneer work-fellow, to whom was commit- 
ted the gospel to the Jews, while he himself labored among the 
Gentiles. Paul states particularly that “ no man stood by him/’ 
that only Luke "-is with him.” 

Peter does not come to meet him at the u three taverns.” Peter, 
in his General Epistles, makes no mention of the Roman Church, 
which he is imagined to have founded ; while he particularly 
speaks of the Asian churches. He mentions Babylon, not Rome ; 
Sylvanus and Mark, never Paul. 

There are many strong proofs and arguments to be drawn, out- 
side of Scripture, against the assertion that Peter was at Rome. 
Dealing here merely with the internal Scriptural evidence, we find 
it all against those legends which have been the cloak of so much 
iniquity. 

The date and place of Peter’s death are unknown. Tradition 


PETER. 


565 


is united in declaring that he was crucified under the Neronian 
persecution. Origen says, with his head downward on the cross, 
at his own request. But we have a stronger evidence than patris- 
tic tradition for the manner of Peter’s death. Christ had especially 
foretold that his ardent adherent should follow him in the bitter 
road of martyrdom. “Thou canst not follow me now, but thou 
shalt follow me afterwards.” “Thou shalt stretch forth thine 
hands and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou 
wouldst not. This he spake signifying by what death he should 
glorify God.” 

The Neronian persecution swept its bloody way through all 
parts of the Empire; the servants of Jesus fell before it like ripe 
grain before the reapers ; this persecution, beginning in the month 
of November, in the sixty-fourth year of the Christian era, raged 
for four years, and was only ended by the violent death of the 
most accursed tyrant that ever wore a crown. 

Peter was probably nearing his seventieth year ; he was worn 
by hard labors; from his earliest childhood he had been one 
of the earth’s toilers : many journeys, watchings, fastings, im- 
prisonments, distresses had exhausted him ; but now his soul re- 
newed its youth like a Phoenix. The time of his release was nigh 
at hand ; he should soon see the face of his Beloved, and hear the 
voice which for three blessed years had filled his soul with com- 
fort. Earth cares, and strifes, and threatenings were drifting un- 
heeded by him ; songs of Jhe new creation fell upon his enraptured 
ear ; visions of glory filled his eyes ; hopes blossomed in his breast, 
hopes that had been buried these many years. 

He in his place, and Paul in his, the Great Twin Brethren, the 
Castor and Pollux of the Church, led valorously the vanguard of 
the Sacramental Host. The carnage raged hotter ; the armies of 
hell contended in innumerable battalions ; the great cloud of wit- 
nesses looked down from heaven on the fight, and welcomed every 
victor home with palms and crowns. 


566 


PETER. 


In these four years of blood, Paul and Peter fell upon the field 
of the faith, fighting their way, and striking valiant blows for 
Christ until the last. 

“ Brief life is here our portion, 

Brief sorrow, short-lived care ; 

The life that knows no ending — 

The tearless life is there. 

And martyrdom hath roses 
Upon that hallowed ground, 

And white and virgin lilies 
For virgin souls abound. 

And Jesus to his true ones 
Brings trophies fair to see, 

And Jesus shall be loved, as 
Beheld in Galilee.” 


XXVIII. 

PILATE AND GALLIO, 

TWO POLITICAL TIME-SERVERS. 


WO characters, drawn with a few salient touches by the 
New Testament artist-writers, hold clearly up to view a 
class of men unfortunately numerous at the present day — 
men who trim the sails of their religious life as best shall 
suit their political advantage. Every man who does this is a 
moral suicide. 

Pilate and Gallio had many things in common as well as the age 
in which they lived ; the offices they occupied ; the nation to which 
they belonged ; the question presented to them, and the death they 
died, were the same. 

The natural dispositions of the pair were widely diverse ; one 
was arrogant, bitter, hasty, durus Pontius ; the other was generous, 
genial, delightful, as the poet Statius calls him in his ode, dulcem 
Gallionem. Yet they had one leading motive — political am- 
bition; and in devoting themselves to the gratification of this 
master-passion, they alike fell into the abyss of infinite ruin and 
despair. 

Pontius Pilate, Roman governor of Judea and Samaria, during 
the reign of Tiberius Caesar, was, by descent or adoption, a member 
of the family of the Pontii, whose head was C. Pontius Telesinus, 
the Samnite general of renown. 

Pilate was the sixth Roman procurator of Judea, and went to 

567 



563 


PILATE AND GALLIO. 


hi?; seat of government accompanied by his wife, Claudia Procula. 
Unfortunately, like most of the Latins, he experienced for the 
Jews a lofty scorn, a violent aversion, which led him in every 
way in his power to trample on their prejudices, and to press 
more cruelly on their prostrate necks the bitter yoke of Roman 
servitude. 

He began his administration by marching into the Holy Qity, 
his legions bearing the ensigns, images of Csesar. Such an indig- 
nity had never before been offered ; it clashed with every idea of 
the Jewish heart; their beloved Temple was desecrated by the 
flaunting of the Roman standard at its gates. 

The heads of the nation sped to Csesarea to remonstrated 
Pilate roughly derided them. They then, as Josephus tells 
us, fell on their faces, and remained persistently prostrate for 
five days. At the end of this time, Pilate surrounded them 
with his armed troops, and threatened them with instant 
death if they did not assent to the presence of the ensigns 
in Jerusalem. They immediately offered their necks to the 
sword, declaring that they would die, rather than see the defile- 
ment of Zion. Unwilling to reign over a depopulated territory, 
Pilate yielded, and commanded the removal of the obnoxious 
standards. 

Some time after, Pilate took the Corban, the consecrated money 
of the Temple, to build a long aqueduct to bring water into the 
Holy City. This interference with the sacred treasury was angrily 
resented by the Jews. 

On the occasion of one of the feasts, the people made a tumult 
concerning the rifled treasury, and the Galileans, who had come 
out of Herod’s jurisdictions to worship, were particularly vehement 
in their demonstrations. As the mob grew more furious, the 
haughty ruler sent his minions among the unarmed people, and 
butchered very many of them. This was during the minis- 


PILATE AND GALLIO. 


569 


try of Christ, and his disciples brought him word concerning 
“Those Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their 
sacrifices.” 

Herod w T as greatly angered by the murder of his subjects, and 
a quarrel ensued between the king and Pilate, which was only 
healed during the last hours before Christ’s crucifixion. 

Before this violent and obdurate governor, the Jewish Sanhe- 
drim hurried Christ in the cold grey morning of the day preceding 
the Passover Sabbath. The cries of the mob brought the gover- 
nor to the seat of judgment three hours before his ordinary time 
of opening his court. 

Filled with fury, the rulers begrudged every moment of life 
to the unoffending Son of Man. They were also mindful of 
the sanctity of the coming day, and wished their victim to be dead 
and buried before it should dawn. 

The Roman governors ever lived in trepidation during the pe- 
riods of the great feasts ; at these times Jerusalem was crowded 
with the sons of Jacob, in whose souls burned hostility to their 
Gentile rulers. These smothered flames were likely to burst forth, 
when the people were crowded together, and each man’s angry 
breath fanned the fires of passion in his neighbor’s soul. Mobs 
often ensued ; and for all riots the government at Rome held its 
delegate in Jewry responsible. 

If the Procurator could not by force or fraud restrain the tur- 
bulent Jews, he was likely to be considered incompetent to fill his 
office, and his successor would speedily arrive. 

Therefore, when, before day, Pilate heard infuriate shoutings ; 
when messengers beat at his doors, crying to him to come and 
condemn a man, who ought, by Jewish law, to die, he made haste 
and went forth to inquire into the disturbance. 

We here note three good things concerning Pilate. First, 
mindful of his duties as Procurator, he refused the instant capital 


570 


PILATE AND GALLIO. 


sentence demanded of him, and proceeded to investigate the case. 
Having done this he clearly and fully pronounced the innocence 
of the prisoner. .Now, as the priests yet more loudly demanded 
vengeance, Pilate proceeded to his third just act, he sought further 
information on the case; which sustaining his former assertions, 
he again pronounced the prisoner “ not guilty.” 

Here he should have taken a step farther in an honest course, 
and have set the innocent free. All equity demanded this of him ; 
but having upheld justice thus far, he falters : three times he lifts 
a feeble voice to save the Victim ; three times his hand, with an 
uncertain clasp, would hold Christ from the infuriate mob of his 
foes, who are lashed on to vengeance by priestly tongues. Too 
weak and unrighteous to pronounce a righteous sentence, he 
ceases to battle with the rising tide of wrath, it sweeps his honor 
and his compassion away, and he gives up Christ to the will of 
the Jews. 

Philo says of Pilate, that “ his disposition was unyielding, nor 
was he moved to leniency towards malefactors.” His relinquish- 
ing his natural habits of feeling on this tremendous occasion de- 
mands a thought. He was led to favor Jesus because of the wrath 
of the Jews. Pilate felt a detestation for the people whom he 
ruled, (and was ready to befriend one whom they hated. We 
know, also, that the majesty and the gracious presence of the 
Divine Man before him, stirred his soul, and brought him to a 
personal interest in him; this feeling, in the event, only made 
Pilate’s guilt more great, his punishment more heavy. 

To rescue the prisoner, Pilate made three several efforts, each 
showing the deep cunning of his nature ; he was overmatched, 
however, by the devil-inspired craft of the rulers of the Jews. 

It occurred to Pilate to shift the responsibility of this judicial 
murder upon the shoulders of Herod, who was then at Jerusalem. 
He therefore sent Jesus to the Tetrarch, to be dealt with as his 


PILATE AND GALLIC). 


571 


subject, putting the case in his hands. Mollified toward Pilate by 
this act, and resolved not to be outdone, Herod returned the 
prisoner to the Governor, trusting all the affair to his judgment. 
These civilities settled the old quarrel, and made the two rulers 
friends. This interchange of compliments when the salvation of 
the world is being consummated, when all heaven stands aston- 
ished and the earth shakes to its centre with the high import of 
the deeds that are transpiring at Jerusalem, chills the devout 
soul. 

Having been foiled in his attempt to escape from his dilemma, 
Pilate is yet more disturbed by a message from his wife. 

Claudia Procula is said to have been a proselyte of the gate, 
and to have lived in sympathy with the Jewish religion. She 
had doubtless often heard of Christ, and perhaps had listened to 
his teachings. Here a heathen woman appears as the sole advo- 
cate of Jesus in his hour of deepest humiliation : she forever gives 
the heathen woman a tender place in our sympathies, and a claim 
upon the good offices of every Christian woman’s heart. In this 
hour of tribulation, Claudia, the Roman, vindicated the devotion 
of woman to her Lord and Master. No ordinary dream would 
have moved a Roman wife to interfere with the tribunal of jus- 
tice ; but Claudia has a vision of bitter agony ; the wife of Pilate 
suffers inexpressible anguish on account of “ that just man.” 

In her message to Pilate, she fortuitously accords with the won- 
derful description by Plato (Politia, vol. iv.) of a perfect man, 
who, “ without doing any evil, shall assume the appearance of the 
grossest injustice ; shall be scourged, tortured, fettered, deprived 
of his eyes ; and after having endured all possible sufferings, 
fastened to post, must restore again the beginning and the proto- 
type of righteousness.” 

Aristotle says that a perfectly just man would be so high above 
the imperfection of human law, that he must needs break it. 


572 


PILATE AND GALLIO. 


In the message of Claudia to her husband, the Greek philoso- 
pher and the Roman jurist meet, testifying to the innocence of 
Jesus of Nazareth. By the side of Pilate, the political time- 
server, we behold his wife, hovering like a guardian angel, yet 
unable to save him from himself, or to avert his fate. 

Pilate now uses his guile a second time. He has in his hands a 
notorious offender ; one whom justice suffereth not to live ; one whose 
name is a household word of terror — Barabbas. By some, it has 
been supposed, that this man set himself up as a Messiah, and 
that, in this character, he had led a bloody insurrection. Know- 
ing that the Sanhedrim were “ moved by envy,” Pilate argued 
within himself, that they feared Christ’s popularity with the com- 
mon people ; therefore he judged that, were the case left to the ac- 
clamation of the people, they would cry out for the safety of their 
favorite. More than this, Pilate did not imagine it possible that 
the Sanhedrim would dare ask pardon for a vile traitor and public 
profligate, instead of sparing a man whose virtue was so extraor- 
dinary that his worst enemies could find no accusation against 
him. 

Having cunningly permitted the populace to gather in great 
numbers, Pilate presented to them an alternative — they might 
have Jesus or Barabbas freed to them — which would they save ? 
To his horror and amazement, they lifted that astounding cry, 
“ Not this man, but Barabbas ! ” 

Thus the fallen and degenerate priests of Israel deny the Son 
of God, rescue the spurious Messiah, whose iniquities had been so 
fully laid bare, and crucify Him for whom their nation had longed 
and prayed ! 

Deeper and deeper sinks Pilate with each passing moment, until 
in his yielding to the cry of the people he has fallen forever from 
manhood and truth, and is lost. 

His third endeavor to change the temper of the mob is most 


PILATE AND GALLIO. 


573 


iniquitous ; he delivered his Victim to be scourged, hoping by this 
horrible infliction to glut the rage of the rulers, and wake the 
sympathy of the people. But his experiment is like giving blood 
to a tiger ; it but whets the appetite for more. Louder comes the 
cry : “ Crucify him ! crucify him.” 

“ Take ye him and crucify him,” said Pilate, shrinking from 
pronouncing so abominable a sentence ; and willing rather to risk 
an illegal act. But the priests were too crafty for this. 

“ It is not lawful for us to put any man to death.” 

“ And then another uproar : “ If thou let this man go, thou art 
not Caesar’s friend.” 

Pilate knew if he let the tumult continue the report of it would 
reach Rome, and he would be held guilty ; of all things he desined 
favor with Caesar, and feared the imputation of disloyalty. He 
might now by acquiescing in the demand of the Sanhedrim gain a 
popularity which he had ever lacked ; a popularity which might 
be worth something. He could not risk his own position for the 
sake of this stranger ; he could not hazard all future promotion for 
justice sake. His resistance ended, and he gave up Jesus to the 
mob, who led him away with wild shouts of triumph and derision. 

Here we see the State becoming the tool of an apostate and 
blood-thirsty Church — as has since often happened. 

During this scene Pilate has behaved like a vile coward ; he is 
without excuse. He dares brave the Jews when it suits his con- 
venience ; and he murders by wholesale Jews and Galileans and 
Samaritans. When he would have his own way, he defies the 
wrath of Herod ; but for Christ’s sake, for the truth’s sake, for 
honor’s sake, he will venture nothing. As to truth, he demands 
captiously what it is ; to him it is a myth ; a fiction of the poets, a 
figment of the golden age. For the sake of that petty State, the 
government of Judea, he becomes a party to the most tremendous 
crime ever consummated; the crowning victory of the Satanic 


574 


PILATE AND GALLIO. 


powers. When lie stands before the Jews ostentatiously washing 
his hands ; taking a symbol from the religion he despises, to testify 
that he is free from the blood of the Holy One, he merely testifies 
to the purity of Jesus, akid to his own eternal condemnation. 

In little matters he can be obstinate enough ; he writes an in- 
scription for the cross, and in it hides his intense scorn for the 
whole nation of the Jews; this inscription nothing will move him 
to change. 

In some things he can be liberal, for when the wealthy Joseph 
brings him his petition, he readily accords his favor, asking no 
bribe, but apparently glad that his Victim shall be humanely in- 
terred. Moreover in this he can gratify his spite against the hated 
Sanhedrim, whose; wrath follows Jesus after he is dead. 

Here closes the chief scene in the great drama of Pilate’s life ; 
one more act, and a black curtain hides him forever. 

In the ninth year of his rule, the Samaritans, lured by promises 
of some religious pretender, gathered for worship on Mount 
Gerizim. They congregated in great numbers, and Pilate was 
pleased to consider their intent rebellious. He attacked them with 
bands of soldiers, and slew very many. The Samaritans appealed 
against his tyranny to Vitellius, governor-general of Syria. Vi- 
tellius put a temporary governor over Judea, and ordered Pilate 
to repair to Rome to answer before Tiberius Caesar the charges 
made against him. After a ten years’ possession of authority, 
Pilate left Palestine in disgrace. 

When he arrived at Rome Tiberius was dead. The proud 
governor found himself without partizans, and during the reign of 
Caius Caligula, unable to endure the misfortunes of his life, he ‘de- 
stroyed himself. Thus he joined the black list of suicides, writing 
his name with Saul, Ahithophel, Judas, and many more who have 
abandoned hope forever. 

From this dark picture we turn our eyes, at first well pleased, 


PILATE AND GALLIO. 


575 


to Gallio, richly dowered by nature, as says his brother, with every 
grace ; blessed with more virtues than art could simulate. 

Gallio was brother to the famous philosopher Seneca. The two 
belonged to the School of the Stoics, more congenial to the bold 
Latin race than the softer philosopy of the Epicureans. 

Gallio was the second son of I. M. Annaeus, a philosopher of 
equestrian family in Spain. The name of Gallio was Marcus An- 
naeus Novatus, but having been adopted by Junius Gallio the 
rhetorician, he received a part of his name, and was known as 
Junius Annaeus Gallio. Gallio and his elder brother, Seneca, were 
born in Cordova during the first decade of the Christian era. 
Their mother’s name was Helvia ; she was famous for wit and 
beauty and graciousness of disposition ; gifts largely shared by her 
sons. 

Early in life these brothers were taken by their parents to 
the world’s Capital, and there trained in all the wisdom of the 
day ; they well repaid the culture lavished upon them. The de- 
votion of Seneca and Gallio to each other was a most beautiful 
example of fraternal tenderness. Seneca showers upon his junior 
the most ardent praises, and the two shared the same vicissitudes 
bf fortune. Elegant accomplishments ; taste for art ; almost un- 
rivalled powers of oratory, and a subtle genius for pleasing, made 
Seneca the friend of kings, and the inhabitant of palaces ; and we 
find him using his high position in behalf of his brother. 

We must read much of Gallio’s character in the light cast upon 
it by the more fully preserved history of Seneca. The philosopher 
was a time-server in the widest sense of the word. Loving 
wealth and learning, cultivating easy indifference to all which 
did not especially concern himself, Seneca could pander to hu- 
manity’s worst passions. He illy deserves Jerome’s epithet of 
Saint Seneca. 

Caligula endeavored to kill Seneca; Claudius promoted him; 


576 


PILATE AXD GALLIO. 


Messalina slandered him and banished him to Corsica, where he 
spent eight years. Agrippina recalled him from banishment, and 
made him tutor of her son Nero. Over the mind of this iniquitous 
monster Seneca obtained a wonderful mastery. The philosopher 
was not too honest to feed his pupil’s vices, that he might retain 
his own power ; nor was he too generous to betray the interests 
of his patroness Agrippina, and compass her murder. 

But to his own family Seneca was true ; one early use of his 
influence over Nero was the procuring of the proconsulate of 
Achaia for his beloved Gallio. The seat of Gallio’s government 
was Corinth. He was proconsul between the years forty-nine-^- 
in which Seneca returned from exile — and sixty-five, when he died. 
The date of his consulship, according to the chronology of Luke, 
is the year of our Lord fifty-two or four, and this singularly 
agrees with the items of information to be culled from the heathen 
writings of the period. 

The geniality of Gallio’s disposition led him to desire popular- 
ity. He was too gentle to use a severe measure that might, by 
any possibility, be avoided; and he had no sooner arrived in 
Achaia than he won the warm regards of the populace, by his 
generosity and easy compliance with their wishes. The sun of 
his prosperity shone brightly ; happy days lay gleaming before 
him; his brother’s will ruled the court of Borne; every day 
added to the family wealth and magnificence. Alas, these splen- 
dors were fatal. Nero was a sovereign who could not brook a 
rival in riches or in genius. 

And now came Paul to Corinth preaching Christ crucified. In 
this famous city of Greece, the Lord had reserved to himself 
“ much people,” and in a vision informed the apostle that he might 
pursue his calling fearlessly, for no man should harm him. The 
human means of his defence was the amiable and erudite Stoic, 
Gallio. 

Through this rich and ornate city, the chief jewel of the Gre- 


PILATE AND GALLIC). 


577 


cian States, famous for its works of art, for its navies and its learn- 
ing, went Paul of Tarsus with the Gospel of Jesus. The Greeks 
of Corinth bowed at the altars of Venus, which crowned. Acro- 
corinthus; at the shrine of this goddess ministered one thousand 
beautiful female slaves; while the luxurious Greeks poured cost- 
liest gifts into the treasury of their favorite divinity. 

The busy Jews, who swarmed the metropolis, loathed the 
vicious rites of the olden Astarte, who had lured their fathers to 
many a fall. Between Jews and Greeks burned slow fires of hate, 
only waiting opportunity to break forth into tempests of flame. 
High above the lewd homage of the Greek and the ceremonious 
devotion of the Hebrew, sat Gallio the Stoic, and it behooves us 
to consider the doctrines which in so great a degree satisfied many 
a cultured mind. The tenets of the Stoics approached Christianity 
in a most remarkable manner. Many Stoics, like many Chris- 
tians, did not live up to the requirements of their creed, but that 
doctrine was one of ascetic purity. Zeno, the founder of the sect, 
taught a strict system of morality, and pleasingly exemplified it in 
his life. They believed in a resurrection of the body, and in a 
divine Providence, though in a very different sense from Christian 
faith on those points ; wisdom they named the power to decide 
between good and evil ; there is no true good but virtue ; virtue 
is highest happiness : pain which does not affect the mind is un- 
worthy of consideration ; in virtue is entire sufficiency to happi- 
ness. The religion of Stoicism was quiet submission to fate ; its 
notions of nature and men held much falsehood; its doctrines 
were refined to an impracticable extravagance, but it moulded 
some mighty minds, and held some lofty souls pure amid a world- 
wide stream of vice. 

The Greeks and Jews were amazed by the preaching of Paul 
many believed and were baptized, but very many more were 
voused to a furious opposition. 


37 


578 


PILATE AND GALLIO. 


The Jews, knowing the complaisant and praise-loving character 
of their new governor, trusted that he would readily accede to a 
loudly-urged demand for Paul’s punishment. They rested in the 
strength of their lumbers, their. political influence, and the vehe- 
mence of their petition, to secure the destruction of a poor, almost 
unfriended man, who came preaching new doctrines. 

If Gallio had been like Festus, Felix, or Pilate, he would have 
fulfilled the desire of the mob, who surrounded his judgment 
seat. 

The turbulent Jews, loud-mouthed, preferred their charges. 
“ This fellow persuadeth men to worship God contrary to the 
law ! ” they cried and explained how and why he offended. 

The Greeks stood looking on, drawn to the tribunal by the up- 
roar, and considering this rage against one slender, scholarly-look- 
ing man, as a legitimate outbreak of Hie hated Jewish fanaticism. 

Paul, at the first lull in the tempest of accusation, essayed to 
speak, but, before he could open his mouth, Gallio turned upon 
the Jewish rulers. The acute jurist had easily discerned the in- 
sufficiency of the plea, the injustice of the whole proceeding. Here 
was a question outside of his province as governor ; the Romans 
allowed the Jews freedom of religious opinion. He states a good 
point in equity, that religious questions are not to be brought be- 
fore the civil tribunal. Acts of injustice, violations of private 
rights, constitute the grounds of legal processes, reasons Gallio : 
this case concerns neither ; it is one of religious faith and practice, 
and he has no desire to act as judge in such matters. The learned 
Stoic sneers a little withal ; it is a matter of words and names . 
Now, while it is wise for magistrates, as such, to refrain from 
meddling with questions of religion ; as men, it behooves them 
personally to inquire into the rights and wrongs of beliefs. As a 
pagan Judge, Gallio behaves well ; but it was to his everlast- 
ing disadvantage that he set the religion of Jesus aside as a 


PILATE AND GALLIO. 


579 


mere affair of words and names, unworthy of his devout investi- 
gation. 

The pagan Gallio is not a suitable model for a Christian judge ; 
he does not deserve the extravagant praise that has for ages been 
lavished upon him. He was not an oppressor of Paul; he dis- 
missed the Apostle’s foes ; but justice should uphold and vindicate 
the right while it restrains the evil. Gallio did nothing in Paul’s 
behalf, he merely dismissed the mob, refusing to punish the priso- 
ner at their request, and throwing all future responsibility of deal- 
ing with Paul upon their own shoulders. 

The Jews, probably, were obstinate and refused to leave the 
tribunal, for the expression is “ he drave them from the judgment 
seat.” 

The praiseworthy act of refusing to interfere or condemn in 
matters of conscience, is at once followed by a very censurable 
course. The Greeks, seeing the detested Jews at a disadvantage, 
discovering that the new governor was quite out of sympathy 
with their bigotry and intolerance, concluded it would be an ad- 
mirable time to vent their own spleen upon the Hebrew synagogue. 
These Greeks, therefore, flew upon the sullenly retiring crowd of 
Jews, seized Sosthenes, the chief ruler of the synagogue, who had 
probably acted as prosecuting attorney in Paul’s case, and drag- 
ging him before the very seat of the calm Gallio, beat him with 
cruel violence. 

Gallio was bound to distinguish between what was above law, 
and what was contrary to law; he failed to do so however. 
Paul’s case belonged to the jurisdiction of the skies ; the Greeks 
were violating the personal and civil rights of Sosthenes their 
townsman, and all justice demanded that Gallio should interfere, 
rescue the sufferer, and chastise the aggressors. 

Indifference was the eminent characteristic of Gallio; indiffer- 

) 

ence to religion too frequently breeds indifference and negligence 
in civil justice. A ruler who fears not God is usually a ruler who 


580 


PILATE AND GALLIO. 


regards not men ; the indifference of Gallio, while it sets Paul free, 
permits a sore wrong to Sosthenes. 

The behaviour of the people shows that they deliberately traded 
in the self-contained, amiable indifference of the proconsul. 

The promise of God to Paul, that he should be safe was won- 
derfully fulfilled. Blows were rained on his enemies, while he 
escaped unharmed. 

The stoical indifference of Gallio to the woes of Sosthenes may 
have been owing as much to policy as to the tenet held by his sect, 
that purely physical pain is not to be regarded. 

Corinth was the metropolis of Greece. The Greeks were here 
in a vast majority; the Jews were aliens living on sufferance; the 
Greeks had the money, the numbers, the political power to greatly 
make or mar the future of their proconsul. The opinion of the 
Corinthians concerning Gallio would be shared by all the Penin- 
sula ; the easy-tempered governor could not endure popular odium ; 
it was decidedly better for him to let his powerful subjects beat 
that sanctimonious Jew to their souls’ content, than to risk his own 
popularity by interfering. Paul went about his Master’s business; 
Gallio cared nothing for that — let him go. 

The Jews, sullen and defeated, slunk homewards. ^ Gallio cared 
nothing for that. They were a minority; they would feel better 
to-morrow perhaps; moreover they had been decidedly in the 
wrong to begin with. 

Sosthenes, poor wretch, was beaten, and Gallio still cared nothing ; 
he had his own position, friends, flatterers, money, intellectual 
pleasures; and the wounds and bruises of Sosthenes, the Jew, were 
of little moment to the proconsul. 

By this decision for Paul, Gallio obtained the gratitude of the 
new sect of Christians ; by his further indifference, he gained great 
popularity with the Greeks. 

At the close of his consulship in Achaia, Gallio was attacked 


PILATE AND GALLIO. 


581 


with a severe illness, for which Pliny tells us that he tried a sea 
voyage ; Seneca also mentions this, stating that he suffered with fever. 

He left Corinth followed by the good wishes and regrets of the 
people, whose fortunes were very greatly in the hands of their 
‘governor, and who seldom were fortunate enough to find a ruler 
as amiable as Gallio. 

Having returned to Rome, Gallio for a time shared the broad 
sunshine of his brother Seneca’s prosperity ; but thunder gusts 
sweep over the hottest noons, and the very raptures of applause 
which greeted Seneca, and the rewards of eloquence and learning 
heaped upon him, became the means of his destruction. His mag- 
nificent villas outshone the palaces of kings ; his gardens were 
each fair as Hesperides ; art lavished her treasures at his feet. 

Perceiving himself to be in danger ; suddenly aware that Nero 
had become his enemy, Seneca retired to his villas and lived in 
seclusion, expecting death. All his wealth he offered to Nero, but 
the tyrant refused the gift, desiring to have the riches only with 
their owner’s life. 

Nero soon took advantage of Piso’s conspiracy to prefer charges 
against his old friend and tutor, and condemn him to death. Syl- 
vanus the tribune was sent to the home of Seneca, bidding him 
put himself to death. Seneca prepared to obey ; his wife and 
Statius the poet remained with him, and doubtless Gallio. 

It has been suggested that later in this year, sixty-five, Nero put 
Gallio also to death, but the more reliable account is that, dis- 
tracted by loss of friends, office, wealth, and brother well beloved, 
Gallio committed suicide, a short time after Seneca’s death. 

The Stoic had his hour of grace when Paul stood before his 
judgment seat, ready to preach Jesus crucified; he let the golden 
opportunity slip from his careless grasp — it came no more. Slowly 
after that hour of careless scorning, the shadows gathered over his 
life ; night and cloud were about him, and, lost in the blackness, 
Gallio Annseus passes out of sight. 


XXIX. 


PAUL, 

THE MODEL OF THE MINISTRY. 


OHN, thrilled with the splendid wonders of that mighty 
^ 1 vision which crowns and closes God’s Aritten revelation, 

notes amid the terrors of opening seals, of clashing thun- 
S ders, of rending skies and a shaken universe, sudden 
silence in heaven, for the space of half an hour. 

Such a pause came also in the world’s history, in the glorious 
reign of Augustus. The earth, long shaken by Titanic struggles, 
found a breathing time; the weary giant rested ; his bleeding limbs 
relaxed in strange slumber. The beautiful arts of peace throve 
in the interim of the great art of war. The Roman power 
widely overshadowed the globe ; where Celts and Parthians had 
set barriers to its progress, and resisted its sway, they were yet 
unable and unwilling to challenge a new battle, when the eagles 
folded their wings. The doors of the Temple of Janus were 
shut. The pirates of the Levant had been dispersed like birds 
and bats of the night before the mild morning. The earth’s 
great heart, the seven hilled city, beat restfully ; the distant pro- 
vinces shared its unwonted calms. 

Cilicia, on the Mediterranean Sea, and Tarsus the jewel of her 
ring of cities, prospered in the peace; the Jewish citizens who 
had suffered much and were to suffer more, shared in the general 

benediction. In this sweet repose of history, the family of a 
582 


paul. 583 

/ 

prominent Hebrew in Tarsus — a man who had been made a Ho- 
man citizen, probably for services rendered to the State — was 
gladdened by the birth of a son. 

This Hebrew ^yas of the tribe of Benjamin, but, if we may judge 
from the family names of Paulus, Lucius and Junta, had strong 
Homan connections. When a son was born to this household, in 
which Homan citizenship was an heirloom, they called him, from 
the crowning beauty of the tribe of Benjamin, that high-hearted 
and hapless warrior-king who first swayed the sceptre over 
Israel, Saul. 

The young Jew, albeit an exile from the Holy City, was trained 
in the strictest practices of the Mosaic law ; moreover in his 
unfolding soul were instilled those ardent hopes, that burning zeal 
for the One God, that earnest expectation for the future, which 
were the very life of the law. A pious family was this of Tarsus, 
intelligently studying the Scriptures and the import of the times 
wherein they lived, so that some of them, as Andronicus and 
Junia, were Saul’s elder brethren in the faith of the Crucified. 

As the lad, growing out of childhood, left his mother’s side, 
his father, mindful of the Babbinical precept concerning a son, “ to 
circumcise him ; teach him the law, and teach him a trade,” set 
the boy to learn tent making ; thus fortifying his future life 
against idleness and poverty. 

The country of Saul’s birth was indeed 

“ Fit nurse for a poetic child.” 

Cold and clear from the snows of Taurus swept the strong river 
Cydnus, rolling through the city an impetuous torrent two hun- 
dred feet broad. The great river which was the marvel of Paul’s 
infant days, has dwindled into a narrow and sluggish stream ; 
while the fame and influence of that nursling who played upon 
its banks has broadened into a great tide, encircling and blessing 
all the world. 


584 


PAUL. 


Hot and dusty noons hushed the city Tarsus as to the silence 
of death ; blessed evenings when the pinnacles of the mountains 
glowed in the departing sunshine, and when cool breezes whispered 
the loves of the land and the sea, called forth the thronging citizens 
to business and pleasure. Flowers, unnumbered and unrivalled, 
lit up the cool depths of adjacent ravines, as jewels light up mines ; 
the city gardens glowed in beauty, and fig and palm, pomegranate 
and orange, hung forth their luscious fruits. Over all the corn- 
bearing plains were scattered the black goats’ hair tents of busy 
harvesters. » 

Wandering through this gorgeous landscape, beholding the 
miracles of changing “ fruitful seasons,” and meditating on the un- 
speakable glory of Him, who made heaven, earth and sea, the 
large-brained boy ripened into a youth wise beyond his years, elo- 
quent, earnest, fiery, flashing into indignant rage, melting into ten- 
der love of mother, sister, nation; filled with Jewish pride and 
prejudice and poetry, in every drop of his hot young blood. 

Far be it from those Hebrew parents to send their child of 
promise to a Gentile school, to be tutored in the intrigues and follies 
and vices of the divinities on Olympus ; it was not for him to see 
the deft fingers of Flora in the fashioning of leaf and blossom, to 
read the wrath of Demeter in drooping corn, to hear how Atlas 
trembled with the added weight when Hercules ascended into 
heaven. Rather, led by a careful slave, the boy went daily to some 
synagogue school, and at the feet of a long-bearded Rabbi conned 
with greedy eyes the characters of the venerable language of his 
race, while his sympathetic nature responded to the sweet music of 
David ; the passions of tenderness in Jeremiah ; the raptures of 
Isaiah ; the grandeur of Ezekiel and Habakkuk. 

But family intercourse and happiness were to be sacrificed at the 
altars of national religion and pride ; the young Jew must go to 
Jerusalem, to learn at the feet of Gamaliel, the most excellent or- 
nament of the Rabbinical school of Hillel. 


PAUL. 


585 


Gamaliel is supposed to have been the son of that grand old 
man, Simeon, who, holding the infant Saviour in his arms, lifted 
the noble strains of the nime dimittis , the swan-song of a believing 
host. With Gamaliel, say the Talmudic writers, the “ glory of 
the law perished;” it perished, but the world lost nothing; for, 
rising, resplendent from the dead ashes of these schools of tradi- 
tions, Gamaliel’s most glorious pupil was the Gospel’s inspired 
teacher, carrying the splendors of the cross over the world. 

An eager student, filled with ambition, puffed up with spiritual 
pride in his own observances and attainments, avaricious of praise, 
notably strict and self-restrained in life, Saul of Tarsus proposed 
to himself to become a shining light in his nation ; to revive an 
ancient type of piety ; to confirm the wavering Hebrew mind in 
the exclusiveness of its most palmy and haughty period. His high 
culture was not unknown or disregarded ; the Jews pointed hin; 
out as a marvellous young man ; Gamaliel set his hopes upoi; 
him. 

The voice of John, crying in the wilderness, fell unheeded or, 
the ear of this proud moralist ; the Teacher from Nazareth walked 
the land, raised the dead, healed the sick, delivered the Sermon on 
the Mount, the compendium of Christianity; "his mysterious 
human life advanced to its consummation ; ” he was crucified, 
died and buried, and Saul of Tarsus, hard as a rock held his own 
proud place, scorning the followers of Christ as heretics con- 
demned already ; and clinging closer and closer to his Judaism 
with every hour. 

He heard of the resurrection of the dead, the resurrection of 
Him whom he called Golgotha’s criminal, and he mocked. 

Jerusaleni trembled at the wonders of that Pentecostal Sabbath, 
but Saul was all unmoved. Peter’s fervid eloquence drew crowds 
of hearers, but over rolls of precious parchments and in assemblies 
of learned Doctors, lingered Saul the Pharisee. 


586 


PAUL. 


Gamaliel, in the Sanhedrim, became the champion of justice, 
and plead the cause of Peter and other Apostles. Saul, gradually 
becoming in spirit a fierce persecutor, is, perhaps, indignant at this 
mildness. Strange that the day shall come, when Gamaliel shall 
wring his hands because his favorite pupil has gone over to the 
cause of Christ, and is foremost of these very Apostles, whi-le he, 
the learned Rabbi now so kind, lifts daily up the prayer against 
all apostates ! 

It is not probable that Paul had, during all these years, been 
continuously at Jerusalem. During part at least of our Lord’s 
ministry, he must have been absent from the Holy City. Perhaps 
he had extended his travels to meet other wise men and students, 
or he may have returned for a time to Tarsus. 

He had nourished a deep hostility to the new doctrines, he had 
vowed vengeance upon their advocates. 

When men have fully made up their minds to do good or evil, 
they need not wait long for an opportunity ; the world is sown 
thick with opportunities, as the skies with stars. 

The teaching and arrest of Stephen, the deacon, “ full of faith 
and of the Holy Ghost,” was the occasion of Saul’s outbreak, 
from cold scorn, to persecuting fury. 

The doctrine of Stephen was a singular anticipation of that of 
Paul. As the young Pharisee stood “ consenting ” to the death 
of this serene disciple, whose face, in the council, had shone like 
that of Moses on the mount — while this nursling of the Rabbins 
kept guard over the garments of the witnesses who stoned Chris- 
tianity’s first martyr, how little would a looker-on have dreamed, 
that the mantle of Stephen’s ascending spirit was even now flut- 
tering earthward to fall upon the strong shoulders of Saul of 
Tarsus. 

But even so : Stephen did not die in vain ; those paroxysms of 
persecuting fury, which succeeded in Saul, were the death-throes 


PAUL. 


587 


of his Judaism. With glowing eyes, like an enraged tiger, he 
looked exulting upon the woes he scattered through the new- 
born church. Men and women, dragged by him to cruel prisons, 
felt that they were in the clutches of a man who knew no mercy. 
The death of Stephen had not been covered, like that of Christ, 
by a show of legality, nor enforced by the prestige of the Roman 
name; it was ‘afoul illegal murder; others, similar, were not 
wanting, but what blood the Sanhedrim dared spill in Judea on 
the plea of religious non-conformity, was not enough to sate the 
thirst of Saul of Cilicia. 

The Great Sanhedrim at Jerusalem claimed a religious supre- 
macy over the Jews scattered in foreign cities. One hundred and 
thirty-six miles northeast from Jerusalem lay the ancient and 
renowned city of Damascus. The name of Damascus is illustrious 
not only as that of the oldest, but one of the most beautiful, 
'wealthy, and well-defended cities in the world, during its time of 
power. To this day it is the head of Syria ; it was old when 
Baalbec and Tyre and Sidon and Palmyra and Heliopolis were 
young ; they, in their graves, have returned to the dust whence 
they came, and still the hoary capital lives on, renewing from the 
full veins of younger cities, its fainting life. “ See Damascus and 
die,” is the Arab proverb ; and it is said that Mahomet refused 
to visit the enchanting spot, lest he should long no more for the 
abodes of Paradise. 

Thither went Saul : not to meet the learned men who congre- 
gated there ; not to satisfy his poetic soul with treasures of oriental 
art ; not that heart and eye might be filled with the loveliness of 
the city enshrined in gardens, whose white homes gleamed through 
groves of deepest verdure and draperies of vines ; where the drip 
of falling fountains and the low whirr and plash of water-wheels 
chimed with the clear whistle of birds, and the gay songs that 
rippled from the inner courts. Indeed, no ; this man went fast 
and furious, armed with power to persecute unto death. 


583 


PAUL. 


So eager was his rage, that his little caravan might not linger 
on the way, dreaming out the scorching noons in some cool cara- 
vanasary ; but on they pressed under the blazing sky, unblessed by 
any breezes, their goaded beasts fainting under them ; on, on, 
knowing no mercy for man nor brute. 

Midday, drought, glare, dust, the air torpid with the great heat ; 
and now suddenly the noon glows with an added splendor, which 
makes the previous glory of the sun seem like some pale candle 
beam. All the air quivers with such an excess of light that he on 
whom that light is especially poured falls blinded, as if he had 
dared to gaze boldly into the very eye of the day. 

The little caravan was thrown into the utmost confusion ; all 
fell prostrate ; the attendants saw no one, yet were conscious of a 
presence ; they heard a voice, a supernatural sound, but no distinct 
words reached them ; all was perplexity and terror. One man 
alone could pierce these mysteries, he for whose soul’s sake the 
magnificence of God’s power had been so strangely displayed — Saul 
of Tarsus. 

To him this was then a vision of unspeakable terror, as after- 
wards it was a source of unspeakable consolation ; he saw throned 
in that great central light the Crucified Nazarene, whom he had 
so hated and despised ; whose name he had held as a synonym for 
all that is most false and vile. Not an instant was needed to im- 
press forever on his soul the eternal divinity of Jesus of Galilee. 
To him the mysterious sounds that followed were articulate speech : 
“ Saul ! Saul, why persecutest thou me ? ” 

O question of ineffable tenderness ! The ardent heart of Saul 
smote him bitterly ; a passionate flood of remorse for past misdoing ; 
of devoted love for Him, so mighty and so kind ; a yearning de- 
sire to work his will and proclaim his ways overflowed the soul of 
Saul the Pharisee. 

“ Who art thou, Lord?” asks the astounded man. 


PAUL. 


589 


Sweet came the accents of that parent tongue, the Hebrew, 
wedded to Saul’s earliest ideas of purity of prayer, of praise: “ I 
am Jesus, whom thou persecutest ; it is hard for thee to kick 
against the pricks.” 

Saul, like Ephraim, was “ as a bullock unaccustomed to the 
yoke.” 

The Saviour who during his earth-ministry had been wont to 
teach in parables, still the same Jesus, though now caught up into 
the glory he enjoyed with the Father before the world was, spoke 
in a parable to Saul. It was vain for him to struggle and rebel ; 
as the ox resists and pierces himself with his master’s goad, so 
Saul resisting the faith of Christ, wounded and tortured himself 
at every step of his way. Let him press on in ready obedience, 
delighting to labor, and comfort should succeed to pain. 

u Trembling and astonished,” Saul recognized his new Master : 
" Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ? ” 

Paul knew of a certainty that he was speaking with and be- 
holding Jesus, the very man and very God, who had lately walked 
the streets of Jerusalem and bled on Calvary. Of this he argues 
afterwards : “ Have I not seen Jesus Christ the Lord ? ” as one 
who mentions an incontrovertible fact. 

He also reasons of the resurrection of the dead because Christ is 
raised up. Paul himself having seen him, and spoken with him, 
after the same manner as “ Cephas,” “ James,” and "all the 
Apostles.” 

This meeting, not in mere ecstatic vision, but in an absolute 
personal appearance, Barnabas later affirms in Paul’s behalf, to the 
Jerusalem Church, and Ananias also refers to it. 

“ What wilt thou have me to do ? ” was Saul’s question. 

“ Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou 
shalt do.” 

Saul rose from the ground a new man. In him had been 


590 


PAUL. 


worked the miracle of transforming mercy ; he fell prostrate a per- 
secutor, a bitter enemy of Christ ; after that brief interval, he rose 
a penitent, a devout follower of that very Christ, endowed with 
grace to live for Him, and to die for Him. 

Here he had received his distinct call to the apostleship, “ called 
by the will of God.” “ An apostle sent not from men, nor by 
man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised Him 
from the dead.” 

We would that all modern apostles had as good proof of their 
ministry. 

The ministry of to-day can expect no miraculous call like this 
man, because they have no miraculous work, as had the great 
Apostle to the Gentiles ; but every preacher of the word should be 
assured in his own mind, and exemplify in his deeds, that he is 
Called, “ Not by man, or the will of men, but by Jesus Christ.” 
Feeling this, the minister of the word will not lightly resign his 
glorious office for secular occupations. 

When Saul had risen from the earth he groped, blinded by the 
great light he had beheld. His awe-struck attendants, taking his 
hand, conducted him into the not distant city; and going through 
the “ street which is called Straight,” established him at the house 
of a Hebrew, named Judas. 

Three days of darkness and solitude had Saul ; days for review 
of the past; for anguished penitence; for strong desire to work in 
the name of this Jesus whom he had persecuted. We learn that 
he spent these three days in prayer. 

The word of God then came to a devout believer of good repute, 
one Ananias, bidding him go to the house of Judas and baptize 
Saul of Tarsus. 

The fame of Saul as a persecutor had gone abroad, carrying 
terror ; Ananias had heard of him ; Saul, the bigot, knew nothing 
of the humble Christian of Damascus. This man enters the in- 


PAUL. 


591 


spired record, merely to perform his great office for Saul, and is 
then heard of no more ; the most significant work of his life was 
accomplished when lie baptized that “ chosen vessel” unto God, 
to bear the blessed name of Jesus, far and wide among the 
Gentiles. 

Ananias, laying aside his easily-stirred fears, entered the house 
of Judas and gave the blind mourner good greeting: “ Brother 
Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, who appeared unto thee in the way as 
thou earnest, hath sent me that thou mightest receive thy sight, 
and be filled with the Holy Ghost.” 

Now straightway Saul was not “ disobedient to the heavenly 
vision,” but through all the Damascene synagogues his eloquent 
voice proclaimed the beloved name of Jesus. 

The lessons he had conned at the feet of Gamaliel ; his Pharisaic 
lore ; his Rabbinical researches, Avere not valueless now ; he turned 
all his acquisitions to the very best account, using the varied in- 
tellectual treasure of years to press home the doctrines of the 
Scripture. His one grand lesson was that Jesus of Nazareth was 
very Messiah ; the Yaveh-Christ, promised and expected since 
Eden. With his multiplied proofs, with that logic in which he 
was so notable a master, Paul confounded the Jews. While he 
doubtless made many converts, he also made hosts of enemies ; 
men zealous as he had been, when he left Jerusalem, and who had 
not like himself been called in a vision. 

'Finding the rage of persecutors waxing hot, he left Damascus 
for a season, and went into Arabia. 

Herod Antipas had aroused an irreconcilable feud with Aretas, 
king of Arabia, by his unfaithfulness to his first wife, the daughter 
of Aretas. This sovereign held his court in Petra, the rock-hewn 
capital of “ Stony Arabia.” 

It is probable that Caligula, who banished and hated Herod 
Antipas, had treated with kindness his injured father-in-law ; and 


592 


PAUL. 


bad confided to bis jurisdiction tbe important city of Damascus. 
This tbe Arabian ruled by an Ethnarch, whom Paul mentions as 
in authority at the time of his escape. 

Perhaps after his first retirement from Damascus, the zeal of 
this Apostle, who had entered into his new life thoroughly armed 
and equipped, led him to present himself at Petra, and preach 
there the Jesus who had been rejected on the banks of the shining 
Chrysorrhoas. 

After a short sojourn in Arabia, Paul returned to Damascus, 
and resumed his preaching. Wherever this man spoke he made 
converts, the love of God burned within him, the power of God 
accompanied his words. 

The Jews were numerous and powerful in Damascus, and they 
were high in favor with the Arabian king and his Ethnarch. 
This friendship was partly the result of the sympathy the Jews 
had shown for Aretas, at the time of his quarrel with the detested 
Herod. 

Being unable to cope with the converted Pharisee in fair argu- 
ment, the Jews won the aid of the governor, and requested him to 
put a watch about the city to apprehend Paul, if he should 
endeavor to escape ; they being resolved to assassinate the too 
popular preacher. The disciples, in great anxiety, took measures 
to protect the new Apostle. 

Damascus, like other ancient cities of the Orient, was sur- 
rounded by a great wall. On this houses were built, often over- 
hanging* the outer side of the fortifications. The Jewish disciples 
made use of an expedient not unknown in their national history. 
As Rahab had let down the spies from her window, over the wall 
of Jericho, these friends in Damascus effected the escape of Paul, 
adding, to ensure safety, a basket to the cord ; and in this basket 
Saul safely reached the ground, and, a fugitive for Christ’s sake, 
sped away into the darkness, seeking new regions where he might 
unfurl the banner of Jesus. 


PAUL. 


593 


Paul first turned his pilgrim feet toward Jerusalem. Chief of 
the Apostles at the capital, was Peter, of whom in former years 
Saul of Tarsus had heard much. He did not need instruction. 
As Minerva sprang fully panoplied from the head of Jove, Saul 
burst into his new life .wearing all the gospel armor, and wielding 
skilfully the sword of the Spirit. But Paul yearned for brotherly 
recognition ; he knew that in Peter was a soul affiniated to his 
own; he would grasp his hand who had clasped in faith and love 
so often the hand of the God arrayed in flesh. 

Saul, hunted, weary, eager for welcome, overflowing wiUi 
brother love for those whom once he hated, entered Jerusalem. 
He found himself a marked man — he was outlawed by all. His 
old teachers, friends, and fellow students, scorned the apostate? ; 
the Christians, made wary by sufferings, doubted his honesty 
toward them. Those were days when news travelled slowly ; 
each city was to its inhabitants the world, and they knew little 
of what went on outside. Vague rumors concerning Saul’s change 
of opinion had reached Jerusalem, and they had been just suffi- 
cient to stir doubt in every soul. 

Here the rich convert Barnabas, loved for his generosity, trusted 
for his whole-hearted sincerity, revered for a devout life — an old 
acquaintance of Saul of Tarsus — came forward, and took him by 
the hand. A true “ Son of Consolation,” Barnabas first believed 
in the sad hearted convert ; he knew Saul of old, as one who 
would never stoop to deception ; he had heard more fully than 
others the facts of his wonderful conversion ; he, therefore, led the 
former Pharisee to Peter, and earnestly narrated what the Lord 
had done for him. 

But two of the Apostles were then in Jerusalem : Peter, “and 
James, the Lord’s brother;” these two received Saul on the 
recommendation of Barnabas; soon loved him for his own sake, 


38 


594 


PAUL. 


and for what the Lord had done for him ; and for fifteen days the 
three abode together, in blessed communion. 

Paul was not the man to tarry ; he had an errand to a whole 
wide world ; the most Catholic in spirit of all the Apostles, he 
burned to proclaim the name of Jesus to all the nations who sat 
in darkness. 

But Saul felt he had a work to perform at Jerusalem; an 
amende honorable to make. Here he had- lifted his voice against 
Stephen ; here he had helped to condemn him as a malefactor ; 
therefore here he must do honor to Stephen’s holy memory, and 
declare his adherence to Stephen’s faith. 

In the synagogues of Jerusalem, Saul lifts up his voice, preach- 
ing the very doctrines of the martyred deacon ; and so great is the 
rage of the Jews thereat, that, in fifteen days, they went about to 
slay him, and Peter and James, Barnabas and the other disciples, 
unite to get Paul to the seaport of Caesarea, and set him forth on 
his way to Tarsus. The free sea is his refuge ; the Phoenician 
ship his ark of safety; his face is toward the home of his 
childhood. 

But Saul had not thus left Jerusalem without an especial order 
from heaven. He longed to work in that dear Holy City. He 
had gone into the Temple to pour out his soul in prayer to Him 
who . is the Eternal Temple of the Jerusalem on high, when sud- 
denly he passed into a trance, and lo, standing beside him w r as his 
crucified, his risen, his ascended Lord. 

“ Make haste, and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem,” said 
Jesus, “ for they will not receive thy testimony concerning me.” 

Reluctant to leave the beloved capital of his nation, Paul 
pleaded his former evil zeal as an argument with the Jews for his 
present sincerity. 

“ Depart,” said the Master, “ for I will send thee far hence to 
the Gentiles.” 


PAUL. 


595 


Here was Paul’s commission to preach to those who had not 
Abraham to their father. Eager only to obey, he left Judea, and 
was presently on his way to Cilicia. 

To Antioch and Tarsus, to Syria and Cilicia, Saul was now the 
messenger of good tidings ; beautiful indeed were his feet upon 
the mountains, for his word was that Messiah, the Hope of the 
Nations, had indeed come, and accomplished his Redemptive 
work; had ascended up on high, leading captivity captive, and 
giving good gifts unto men. 

At this period Tarsus is said, by Strabo, to have surpassed 
both Athens and Alexandria, in the number and wisdom of its 
philosophers, and in the zeal of its inhabitants for learning. 

To these heathen scholars came a man who was able to argue 
with them on their own ground ; whose education had been con- 
ducted on the most liberal principles ; whose mind was enriched 
by all the learning of the day ; whose natural gifts were set olf by 
all the ornaments of poesy and rhetoric. 

Here in the synagogue, where as a boy he had worshipped, 
Saul sat down to teach and to prove that the Hope of the Jews 
had been abundantly realized in Jesus of Nazareth. 

Among those citizens, who were even then paying divine 
honors to Athenodorus, the light of the Stoics, went Saul, teaching 
a more glorious faith than Zeno had set forth ; a higher wisdom 
than earth’s most erudite philosophers had attained. 

Saul was not long left to labor alone ; Barnabas, that “ good 
man full of the Holy Ghost, and of faith,” left Jerusalem to join 
his friend in his mission to the Gentiles. * From this hour the 
great Apostle becomes the centre of a missionary band, who strive 
to preach the cross where Jesus has not been so much as named, 
in order that those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death 
may know the rising of the light, that “ new name ” whereby their 
souls might live. 


596 


PAXIL. 


While Paul labored at Antioch the despised sect of the Nazarencs 
received from their enemies the appellation of Christians, from the 
name ever on the lips of their eloquent preacher. 

Here at Antioch Saul received another of those revelations 
which led him on his appointed way. “ Separate me now,” said 
the Spirit, “ Barnabas and Paul, for the work, whereunto I have 
called them.” 

With that simple ceremony of laying on of hands with prayer, 
began Paul’s great mission through the world ; his immense 
journeys; his sore distresses; his terrible afflictions and persecu- 
tions ; the strange hours when he was swept by the passionate ado- 
ration of the mob to the .high position of a god, and then because 
he forever lifted the cross of the Crucified higher than himself was 
cast down, despised and bleeding and trampled under feet. 

His life is a most wonderful panorama ; scene after scene of 
strange diversity sweeps before us; here goes Saul through the 
streets of a city, the mob following him filling the air with their 
adulation; in another hour he is beaten uncondemned, and cast 
into prison. One moment the eager multitude hail him as the god 
Mercury, and run with oxen and garlands t6 offer sacrifice to him ; 
the next shifting scene shows us his bleeding, mangled body, 
dragged for dead out of the city, flung on the cold stony ground, 
while by the struggling moonlight his weeping friends search his 
pale face, despairing of finding sign of life, and taking their last 
fond farewells. But this marred, inanimate form is immortal until 
a mighty work has been done, and lo, Paul rises, and enters again 
into the city where he has been stoned. 

One while he is the friend and honored companion of men high 
in power; Sergius Paulus, the learned governor of Paphos, be- 
comes Paul’s convert ; at the hour when Elymas the sorcerer is 
struck blind by the Apostle’s one great miracle of wrath, the name 
of Saul of Tarsus is changed to Paul. From this point in the 


PAUL. 


597 


history he is the great central figure in the early Church ; he leads 
the advance of Christianity, and the tent-maker of Tarsus, the 
pupil of Gamaliel, the persecuting Pharisee, is now the grand 
picture set before us, until the inspired narrative of the Acts 
of the Apostles closes. 

Paul, who argues eloquently before all the apostles and elders 
at Jerusalem, is the same Paul who, standing on the river side at 
Philippi, preaches to the women who assemble there for prayer ; 
Paul who with Silas sits and sings at midnight in a dungeon, 
is the high-spirited Paul mindful of his birthright of Roman 
citizenship, who demands from the rulers the honor which is his 
due. 

Model for all preachers of the word, he is instant in season and 
out of season ; he consults not his own ease or pleasure ; he is gentle 
with the inquiring, ready to forgive injuries; bold and constant in 
his attacks upon sin ; conscious of the dignity of his office, respecting 
it, and demanding that he shall be respected in it. 

Looking back to Thessalonica, we behold this Paul calm amid 
an infuriated mob ; at Athens, the beauteous crown of Greece, we 
see him with his ardent spirit stirred by beholding on every 
side the altars of the Attic Pantheon; those glorious marbles, 
triumphs of art, signify to him lost souls, human hearts resting 
their eternal destiny on a terrible lie. 

Athens was a wilderness of beauty; on every hand were won- 
derful statues raised to gods and men ; among its groves were the 
memorials of philosophers and warriors, Solon, Demosthenes, and 
Conon ; the heroes of the dim age of fable, Hercules and Theseus, 
were embalmed in marble. There were all the glittering circle of 
the court on high Olympus, “ great Heres ” with her angry eyes ; 
Venus the matchless daughter of sun and sea ; Diana and her ra- 
diant brother ; the brawny master of the glowing- forge, named 
Hephaestus by the Greeks. 


598 


PAUL. 


“And in the Ausonian land 
Men called him Mulciber, and liow he fell 
From heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove, 

Sheer o’er the crystal battlements ; from morn 
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, 

A summer’s day ; and with the setting sun 
Dropped from the zenith life a falling star 
On Lemnos, the iEgean isle.” 

Praxiteles and Pericles had lavished their transcendent genius 
upon Agora, Acropolis and Propylsea ; art had found in Athens 
her true resting place, and brooded over it, her divine presence 
filling all the air. 

But he who from the inception of his ministry was determined 
to know nothing save Christ crucified, the Hebrew convert, walked 
sadly through these marble mazes, because He who dwelleth not in 
temples made with hands Had no abiding place in these myriads 
of human hearts, which lived and loved and died in Attica. 

Little was it to Paul that men were carving for themselves 
deathless names in marble, when their souls w T ere going down to 
woe. 

Those learned men, that glorious circle of philosophers who were 
moulding the ruling thoughts of nations and of centuries, the mighty 
teachers of a pagan world, knew nothing of the very beginning 
and foundation stone of all true wisdom, the fear of the Lord ; 
knew nothing of that Divine Teacher who spake as never man 
spake ; who had gifted his little school of Galilean fishermen with 
powers which should sway the world, when the schools of Plato 
and of Aristotle should have perished with the plane-trees and olive 
groves, under which the great pupils of Socrates discoursed their 
grand abstractions. 

Meeting the learned ones of Greece in open argument, Paul 
shows himself a wary teacher of men ; he seizes on their present 
surroundings, he points to that altar, the one altar to the Unknown 
Power, which expressed the unsatisfied yearning of the hungry 


PAUL. 


599 


Grecian soul, searching for the highest, and used the choice verses 
of their own poet Aratus to press home the truth, when the inscrip- 
tion of their altar was the text whence he could preach Jesus, and 
the Resurrection from the dead. 

Thus he labored, preaching his Master alike in the Areopagus and 
in prison cell, in the crowded streets and in humble homes, zealous 
for the conversion of all men, whether lofty or lowly, Jew or Greek, 
bond or free. He who gave thus freely to his Lord received good 
gifts from on High. To Paul, the tireless preacher, Paul, often 
grieved and desolate in spirit, were accorded most gracious visions. 
His Lord stood by him, bidding him be of good cheer ; again he 
heard him promising his presence; he beheld the heathen world 
stretching out imploring hands for help ; and when beset by foes 
without and feebleness within, he was caught up into heaven, and 
heard such ravishing sounds as man may not utter. 

In the riches of revelation vouchsafed to him ; in the multitude 
of his labors ; in the abundance of his success ; in the sacrifices 
he made for Jesus, and in the afflictions he endured for Jesus’ 
sake, he was not a whit behind the chiefest of the Apostles. 

He stands very clearly before us in the character which he 
accepts as his especially, “ Paul the prisoner.” 

Many of his sermons were preached, many of his noble epistles 
were written, many of his good works were wrought in prison. 
Jerusalem, and Caesarea, and Pome, held him a captive bound 
with chains ; but no chains were on his free spirit, for the flood- 
tide of his eloquence amazes Festus, and makes Felix tremble, 
as mightily he reasons of the truth of God. Nor do his priva- 
tions and trials check the geniality and tenderness of his natural 
disposition ; Paul the prisoner is the very flower of courtesy. 

How gracious his quick reply to his judge: “I would that 
thou wert not almost, but altogether such as I am — except this 
chain ! ” 


600 


PAUL. 


What a model of generosity and grace and dignity is liis epistle 
to Philemon. 

Paul’s life epistles, metaphors, companions, orations, have 
formed the subjects of ponderous tomes by the most recondite 
scholars of the day ; the theme seems still ever fresh, so noble was 
the man’s character, so important his mission, so pregnant was 
his life with incident. But he whose name is to-day a precious 
household word throughout the world ; whose memory is to 
the Church as fragrance poured out, was in his life despised, 
mocked, tortured, condemned, and so indeed have been many, his 
brethren. 

“Know ye not that the saints shall judge the world?” Their 
day is far off, and for these many centuries they are judged by the 
world, and sentence is passed upon them. 

We mark the great Apostle as a prisoner, tried at the bar of 
profligate and Pagan judges. 

He is brought to the court of Felix. 

Born of a servile family, suddenly elevated to power through 
the influence of his brother, the freedman and favorite of the 
emperor Claudius, Felix was a man devoid of generosity, wisdom 
and honor ; without grace of manner or personal attractions ; bold 
in war, mean, avaricious, cruel and false, as Tacitus says, “ in 
the practice of all manner of lust and cruelty he used the power 
of a monarch, with the disposition of a serf.” 

His present wife, Drusilla, he had beguiled from her husband 
by means of a sorcerer, probably Simon Magus. 

Before this brute in the human form, Paul, the learned, the 
virtuous, the pious, was brought to plead. Paul’s studious and 
guileless youth had been the admiration of Tarsus ; his wise and 
moral manhood had filled Jerusalem with its good report ; his 
fervent preaching, enforced by holiness of life, had won converts 
in Athens, and had received the praises of its most honorable men 


PAUL. 


601 


and women ; but here stood Paul ; before this base slave, lifted to 
a throne by the whim of Claudius. 

Felix had been of some advantage to the Jews in freeing the 
country of robbers, and expelling the Egyptian impostor, for 
whom C. Lysias had mistaken Paul. 

Hearing Paul many times; convinced of his entire innocence 
of any wrong; trembling in his presence with conscious guilt; so 
far favoring his prisoner as to command some alleviation to his 
hard lot, and granting permission to his friends to visit him, 
Felix yet, for two years, denied the simple justice of release; and 
when the governor was summoned to Rome to answer accusations 
of maladministration, “ he left Paul bound,” as a last act to win 
favor of the Jews, and soften their representations to Caesar. 

Festus succeeded to Felix, and before him Paul was im medi- 
ately. brought for trial. Only three days had the new governor 
been formally in office, when he went up to Jerusalem and was 
besieged by the Jewish rulers with entreaties to send Paul to 
them, to be judged according to their will. 

The answer of Festus was just and dignified; he held to the 
majesty of Roman law ; a man was not to be given uncondemned 
to the mercy of his foes; investigation of criminal cases was one 
of the duties of a ruler; let the elders of the Jews face Paul at the 
court in Caesarea. 

Here again we find the Apostle brought like a felon to the 
bar; he is to plead his own case against the famous orator, 
Tertullus. 

Accusations unnumbered were heaped up against him ; power, 
money, relentless hate were all on the side of his foes. 

Yielding to the pressure brought upon him, the new governor 
asked: “Wilt thou go up to Jerusalem, and there be judged of 
these things before me?” 

Paul knew the many plots to assassinate him ; he was not the 


602 


PAUL. 


man recklessly to fling his life away. He cast himself upon his 
hereditary privilege as a Roman citizen. 

(( I stand at Caesar’s judgment seat, where I ought to be judged 
... I appeal unto Caesar.” 

He asserted his incontrovertible right ; he had out-generalled 
his would-be murderers. He had, of his lofty Roman prerogative, 
transferred himself from the jurisdiction of the provincial judge, 
before whom he stood, to the supreme tribunal of Caesar, in the 
seven-hilled city. 

Vainly did the representatives of the Sanhedrim gnash their 
teeth, when Festus, having conferred with his assessors, pro- 
nounced his decision: “Hast thou appealed unto Caesar? To 
Caesar shalt thou go.” 

Feeling bound to specify some charges against the prisoner, and 
having nothing to say, because Paul had so effectually refuted the 
falsehoods of the Jews, Festus desired Paul to explain his case 
before Herod Agrippa II., king of Chalcis, who, with his sister- 
wife Berenice, was now to make a visit of state ceremony to 
Caesarea. 

Here sat, self-constituted judges of Paul, three of the most 
notorious sinners of the time. Festus, the Roman ; Herod 
Agrippa, who had all the vices of his grandfather, Herod the 
Great, who was even then living with Berenice, his sister, in 
shocking opposition to the laws of God and man. 

“ Hiinc dedit olim 

Barbarus incestse, dedit liunc Agrippa sorori,” 
says a satirist of the day. 

While Berenice, the most beautiful and most vicious woman of 
her period, married first to her uncle, twice to her brother, then 
to Polemo, king of Cilicia, and, later, the haughty concubine of 
Vespasian, and of his son Titus, formed the third of the court of 
inquiry into the life of him, who had been taken up into the third 


PAUL. 


603 


heaven, and been ravished with the glory of the abodes of the 
blessed ! 

lie preached before them and they called him mad, mad with 
much learning, said Festus, who could not deny the prodigious 
intellectual acquirements of his orator. 

To these three high criminals before heaven, Paul that day de- 
picted the life of holiness, and offered salvation through Jesus 
Christ. Scornfully they put the proffered mercy by, and sent the 
prisoner on, to answer for his life at Caesar’s bar. 

Behold him, next, after long journeys, after months of toil, 
shipwreck and disaster, advancing toward Rome upon the Appian 
Way ; across rivers, among vine-robed hills, through the rich 
Campana, past the villas of poets, senators, consular men, and 
warriors of high degree, over a land lying in wickedness, idola- 
trous then, as now, above other lands, went Christ’s “ ambassador, 
in bonds,” until at Appii Forum and the Three Taverns, Paul 
suddenly was met by his brethren in the Lord, by loving disciples, 
trophies many of them of his own earnest zeal ; and when sweet 
words of compassion and encouragement fell on his ears, wearied 
with sounds of strife and blasphemy, “ he thanked God,” and his 
soul revived again. 

The bar of Csesar was by no means the bar of justice ; from 
time to time the indolent emperor deferred the hearing of the case, 
keeping his victim meanwhile in bonds. But these years of neg- 
lect and cruelty on the part of the sovereign of the mighty empire 
were years fruitful to the church of God, for Paul made very 
many converts in his chains, and wrote epistles wherein he 
preaches to the centuries. 

With this imprisonment at Rome, the Scriptural account of 
Paul ends. The evidence of the early writers of the church, 
though not abundant, seems conclusively to prove, that Paul, be- 
ing at last heard by Csesar, was acquitted and set free, that he 


604 


PAUL. 


then made a tour of the churches he had established, and, going so 
far as Spain, there preached the gospel. 

After this the Apostle returned to Rome, either of his own free 
will, to instruct and strengthen the converts he had made in the 
imperial city, or, as before, being a prisoner under arrest. 

At this time, the persecution under Nero was raging. It was 
mid- winter of the last year of Nero’s life. When Paul w T as cast 
into prison his persecuted friends in mad terror forsook him ; the 
little church had been scattered, the Christians were fugitives, 
hiding in dens and in caves of the earth ; they took refuge in the 
catacombs, and there buried their dead, baptised their children, 
and celebrated in the Lord’s supper the dying love of Him for 
whom they were to die. 

Brought to the bar of that ferocious murderer and adulterer, 
Nero, Paul, like Christ, found no man to stand by him, and, like 
Christ, prayed for the forgiveness of his unfaithful friends. Being 
heard, he was remanded to his cruel dungeon. 

With the sword of the executioner ever hanging over his head, 
he sings the love of Jesus and the peace of the believer. A sub- 
lime strain of hope pours from his lips : “ I am now ready to be 
offered, and the time of my departure is at hand ; I have fought a 
good fight, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for 
me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, 
shall give me in that day.” 

What terrors had dungeon gloom, or bloody sword for such a 
glorious soul, already lifting its strong pinions poised for its 
flight into Heaven ? 

To him, from Asia, came Onesiphorus, unashamed and unafraid, 
to minister to his wants, and bear the greetings of the church. 

Sentenced to death ! Saved by his birthright privilege from 
torture, he was to die nobly by the sword. 

Forth from the gate looking to Ostia, comes Paul to die. 


PAUL. 


605 


Bright is the summer sky of Italy, dusty the much-travelled road 
stretching toward the harbor ; merchants and sailors, beggars and 
mountebanks, soldiers and scholars, travellers, and culprits in 
chains, throng the busy way. Amid them, guarded by a blood- 
thirsty band, preceded by the executioner, marches this Saul of 
Tarsus, Paul the Christian, Paul, the shining light of the Church, 
following his Lord without the gate, to meet him by the short and 
bloody way of martyrdom. 

A grim, stony, barren spot upon the plain, a kneeling form, a 
savage circle of lookers-on, a flash of bright steel in the hot sun- 
shine, a rush of crimson upon the ground, and a lifeless body 
falling prone, this is the scene below. But if the Lord had opened 
that executioner's eyes, as he did those of Elisha's servant, lo, he 
would have seen all the blue dome of the sky full of horses and 
chariots of fire ; shining hosts of angels, singing as they fly, glad 
escort to this great soul, going home; Jesus standing at the right 
hand of God ; the glorious company of the Apostles who have 
suffered and been glorified before him ; the goodly fellowship of 
the early martyrs ; the mighty army of the prophets; John the 
Forerunner; the grand old patriarchs, a jubilant host, all waiting 
to welcome him, Paul their brother, the Apostle of the Gentiles, 
the herald of salvation ; the man most catholic of soul and earnest 
of life, of any man who ever carried the banner of the cross. This 
is the scene in heaven, when the Church on earth lost her beloved 
Paul, and weeping friends took up his gory corpse and buried it 
in the Labyrinths. 


XXX. 


JOHN. 

THE VISION OF THE PARADISE OF GOD. 


AVING reached the close of his journey ; his toilsome days 
ended ; going to the land where the blessed live by 
sight, Pilgrim Standfast turned to his friends, saying : 
“ I have loved to hear my Lord spoken of ; and wherever 
I have seen the print of his shoe in the earth, there have I coveted 
to set my foot.” 

Such an one was that man of dual nature called, in Holy Writ, 
“son of thunder,” and “disciple that Jesus loved.” John of 
Galilee — John, mild, gentle, and peaceful, and loving above other 
men; John, high-hearted, lofty, hasty, impetuous, a spirit kin- 
dred to Simon Peter. His first appearance before us is a pro- 
phecy ; he is following the Master, and he is following him home . 

It is the close of day; the tops of these yellow cliffs glow 
suddenly like molten gold, their long shadows fall athwart the 
gray sand road beneath them ; a faint breeze lifts the streamers 
of the long dry grass, seared and bleachened by rainless weeks ; 
there is a stir and a whispering among the drooping pods of the 
Kharub trees, and in the lines of departing light striking through 
the dells, the dark leaves of the Cistus glisten. Evening draws 
on early in this deep valley of the Jordan ; you can hear the 
flowing of the famous river of sacred story, as it winds along its 

deep bed. Yonder by the ford behold the throng of Jews intent 
606 


















































































1 1 






















































































JOHN. 


607 


upon the words of the New Elijah, the Voice crying out of the 
wilderness. 

Apart from this excited throng walks the Son of a long line of 
earthly kings, a man of majesty above other men ; one who makes 
his poverty and solitude glorious ; in whose human form taber- 
nacles eternal memories, and the Divinity which spoke worlds 
into being. “ Behold the Lamb of God ! ” 

Behind him follows, with reverent step, with mingled awe and 
eagerness, the most goodly and gracious of the children of men — 
John, the son of Zebedee. 

John had been reared amid the most momentous events of the 
most momentous period of history. 

His mother, Salome, marrying early, as was the wont of Jewish 
women, had been taken to the home of Zebedee, in Bethsaida — 
no mean abode. More than one vessel belonging to Zebedee, and 
manned by his servants, fished upon Gennesaret ; when he went 
up to Jerusalem to the feasts, he went to his own house; his 
family were well known, and in no low position. 

But Salome, his wife, was kin to the two most noble and 
divinely dowered women of all time : she was cousin to the blame- 
less Elizabeth, mother of John Baptist, and .she was sister of 
Mary, the “ highly favored/’ the Mater Speciosa. 

The events surrounding the birth of John Baptist had been 
sounded abroad, and filled the land with wonder. Salome must 
have known them, and, as concerning her family, cherished them 
with much interest; so that while the lapse of thirty years ban- 
ished them from the minds of most people, they were to her of the 
marvellous traditions of the days when she, herself a young wife 
and mother, sympathized with the consummated hopes of her aged 
relative. 

These events Salome had, perhaps, recounted in some twilight 
hour to her children ; and though James and John had possibly 


608 


JOHN'. 


never met the cousin who, born in distant Juttah, and reared in 
the wilderness, was hidden from the companionship of men, the/ 
went to him as to no stranger, when he baptized at the Jordan. 

The circumstances of Mary, the betrothed wife of the royally 
descended carpenter, had been different. The marvels about her 
child she had kept, and pondered them in her heart. Public 
curiosity had not been feasted on the details of the visions sent 
four times to Joseph ; of the incidents of Bethlehem, and the flight 
into Egypt. Yet for all this, Mary must have unfolded some 
of these experiences to her true-hearted sister ; and though, per- 
haps, these Jewish women rarely saw each other, Salome knew 
that a celestial mystery hung about Mary’s First-born Son. 

These holy marvels of the history of Jesus and of John Bap- 
tist, had been sacred influences, lofty themes, to mould the youth 
of the two brothers, James and John, in their happy early home. 

Nurtured among the genial, honest, religious people of Galilee; 
having for his chosen companions the carefully reared sons of 
Jonas, and the noble hearted Philip ; the youngest darling of his 
parents ; safely shielded from the cares of life, the temptations of 
vice, the pinching of poverty, the coldness of strangers, this 
gifted, warm-hearted, genial boy, grew to a manhood, whose beauty 
and dignity placed him, cherished and best beloved, the nearest 
friend of Jesus upon earth. 

John is generally supposed to have been younger than his 
Master, and the junior of all the Apostles. Painters have loved 
to give him a delicate singularly feminine appearance, strangely 
out of keeping with what we read of him, and with the character- 
istics he seems to have inherited from his mother. 

He was no dainty idler of courts, but with true Jewish industry 
pursued his father’s calling : the battle with wind and wave, the 
weariness of rowing; the strife with sudden storms; days and 
nights spent in fishing, would have fashioned rather the bronzed 


JOHN. 


GOO 


man of muscle, than the fair, drooping, golden curled youth the 
artist is prone to set before us. He whose flashing eye blazed its 
rage against inhospitable Samaritans, and whose ringing voice 
demanded that fire should foe rained on them from Heaven, could 
have been no fainting girl-faced youth, but one whose hot-headed 
boyhood had kept pace with Simon Peter’s, as hereafter they 
should keep equal step in the aggressive march of Christianity. 

To his mother as the chief influence upon his youth, we first 
turn our eyes ; she comes before us as an ambitious, high-spirited, 
devoted woman. She desires of Jesus that her two sons shall sit, 
the one on his right hand and the other on his left, when he enters 
into his kingdom; she follows her Lord in many an hour of toil, 
of terror and of pain ; she ministers to him of that substance be- 
queathed to her by her husband ; death does not chill the fervor, 
of her friendship ; u last at the cross and earliest at the tomb,” she 
is eminent among that goodly band of women, the mothers of the 
early Church. 

Her sons are close copies of herself ; they are named Boanerges, 
for fiery zeal; their love, is an unquenchable flame; they give 
up all for Christ, and do verily follow him to prison and to death. 

Nor, in considering this family, must we forget Zebedee. He 
has trained his household in the fear of God; in a knowledge of 
the Scriptures ; and in a blameless obedience to Mosaic law. With 
spiritual insight clearer than many of his compeers, he sees behind 
outward rites the higher intention ; his teachings have prepared his 
sons to receive more readily than other Jews the true Messiah. 
He has been a prudent man in business, industriously providing a 
competence for his family ; nor does he set the wealth of this world 
above the heavenly riches, for he is willing that his sons shall leave 
their daily avocation to listen to the teachings of John, and to 
share the lot of Jesus. His spirit of self-sacrifice is fully seen, 
when at the call of Christ he relinquishes both his sons, and thence- 
39 


610 


JOHN. 


forth cheerfully misses them from his home and from his boats, 
and is ministered to by servants during the brief remainder of 
his life. 

The history of John is peculiarily mingled with that of Peter, 
as the two were together in many of their most wonderful ex- 
periences. 

John was the nearest and most trusted friend of his Lord ; he 
was the first prophet, as his brother was the first martyr of the 
new dispensation ; John was to the Church the type of ideal 
depth and calmness, of those few favored souls who reach wonder- 
ful mysteries of fellowship and apprehension of Christ, and of the 
eternal world; and who repose in a divine calm amid all the tu- 
mults of life. James was the prototype of martyrdom, of that far 
greater host who have loved not their lives unto death. 

These two and Peter were with Jesus at his great miracle in the 
house of Jairus ; they beheld his glory, as Peter writes in his 
second epistle, when they were with him on the holy mount ; and 
they accompanied him in that hour when his soul was “ surrounded 
with sorrow.” 

During this period this so loved and loving disciple did not pass 
unrebuked. “ Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of,” says 
Christ, when into the dispensation of the gospel of peace the sons 
of Zebedee would drag the fiery vengeance of Elijah’s sterner day, 
and have their adversaries consumed before their eyes. 

Accompanied by their mother, to act as their advocate, these two 
brothers plead with Christ for pre-eminence in his kingdom, which 
they still expected as of earth. 

“ Ye know not what ye ask,” said Jesus ; “can ye drink of the 
cup that I drink of? and be baptized with the baptism that I am 
baptized with ? ” 

“We can,” replied the ardent and fearless ones. 

u Ye shall indeed,” said Christ, and this promise and prophecy 


JOHN. 


611 


held for one a long, persecuted, patient life ; for the other, an early 
and bloody death. 

In their request, devotion had been mingled with ambition ; faith 
with pride. Jesus gently rebuked the one, while he strengthened 
the other. 

The ten fellow-disciples saw only the earthly ambition of the 
desire, and thence arose among them displeasure against the sons 
of Zebedee. 

We have glimpses opened to us of private instruction and inter- 
course between the three Apostles, Peter, James and John, and 
their Master, which show a more constant companionship than 
was enjoyed by the others. 

J ohn is Peter’s assistant in preparations for the last Passover. 
At that mournful meal he reclines next his Lord at the table, and 
drawn nearer by secret sympathy and yearning tenderness as Christ 
depicts his own approaching suffering and desolation, John leans 
his head against his Master’s bosom. 

In the darkness of that terrible night John follows his captive 
Lord from Gethsemane to the house of Caiaphas ; through the 
hours of trial he stood near, his heart torn with grief for his Master, 
with amazement at the restraining of that power which had so 
lately governed all the forces of nature, and wrought wonders — 
with holy anger against the raging Jews. 

Love stronger than death sustains him through that awful day, 
when the veil of the Temple is rent asunder with the rent veil of 
the flesh of Jesus; when the Mosaic ritual ushered in by the flame 
and thunders of Sinai, passes away amid the earthquake and dark- 
ness; and the gospel of grace enters with Christ’s expiring sigh. 

With his mother, with Mary Magdalene, and with his well be- 
loved aunt, the mother of his Lord, he stands beneath the cross. 
Amid his overwhelming sorrow his arm sustains her whose soul 
is pierced with a sword, Metier dolorosa ; he receives her as his 


JOHN. 


612 

Master’s legacy ; and when Joseph’s garden holds all that is best 
and most precious on earth, he takes the most bereaved of mothers 
to his own home. 

On the first day of the week, when the sun had but just risen, 
John, fleet of foot, ran through the dewy aisles of Joseph’s garden, 
to that new rock-hewn sepulchre, whence he had heard that his Lord 
had gone. A fair, a peaceful spot, where in the thick trees the 
birds had hushed their song; where drooping vines, and glorious 
blossoms pouring fragrance, lilies and roses, almond and acacia, 
had kept watch and ward with angel guests passing to and f ro 
among them, during a long Jewish Sabbath, and two still Syrian 
nights, while a weary Saviour slept ! 

His Lord is risen ! No such tide of joy can again overflow the 
soul of John on earth, as now fills his heart, when first he realizes 
that his great Master is alive again. 

The hope which he had buried not merely grows sweet and 
blossoms in the dust, but it has struck its roots to the foundations 
of the earth, has towered beyond the loftiest cedars of Lebanon up 
into the very heavens, and all the nations of the earth maLe their 
refuge under its comforting shadow. 

Happy is John during these next days; bright appearances of 
the Master glorify the lives of the lately despairing disciples. 

Then comes the journey into Galilee; a journey perhaps in their 
Ignorance too long delayed, and ending in the wrong place, for 
here are these men who “ have left all ” to follow Jesus, casting 
their nets into the cool blue depths of Lake Tiberias. In the dim 
twilight of that morning by the sea, John the pure hearted is 
the first to recognize his Beloved. He is sure of Jus Lord; that 
gracious form ; the mellow accents of that voice, the miracle, are 
proof upon proof that the Stranger on the sea sand is the very 
Christ ; therefore, certain of a welcome when he reaches the shore, 
John, with characteristic calm adherence to the business before 


JOHN. 


613 


him, remains by ship and nets until all reach the land. He goes 
in assured peace and joy behind his Lord, in company with his 
five fellow-disciples; while Peter, lately erring and lately forgiven, 
cleaves close to his Master’s side. 

When with that last glorious scene on Olives the Saviour’s 
earth life closes, and he rises into the infinite eternal glory wherein 
he dwelt from the beginning, John, with the remaining Apostles, 
returns to Jerusalem. Here we see him hand in hand with Peter, 
preaching, performing miracles, sharing imprisonment, before 
councils and rulers, and building up the Church. 

His home in Jerusalem is a blessed one: here dwell those long- 
parted sisters, Salome and Mary ; both know the woes of widow- 
hood ; Mary rejoicing and suffering as never woman and mother 
suffered and joyed, now harvests her reward; her son and her 
God has ascended up into glory at the right hand of the Majesty 
on high. Salome has yet to bear her heaviest grief, the murder 
of her eldest born. 

The hour of agony comes. Herod Agrippa stretches forth a 
cruel hand, and the victim of his sword is James, the son of Zebe- 
dce. That princely young man falls, James of the eagle-eye and 
ti'ampet-tongue ; James, in whose veins the blood of Levi and 
Judah mingle, a royal and a priestly tide ; James, loving son and 
noblest of brothers; lo, he lies beheaded. Evening fills about 
that home in Jerusalem ; the mangled body is wrapped in a wind- 
ing sheet for secret burial. Mary, Salome, Peter, Andrew, John, 
and others of that Apostolic martyr-band weep together. 

“ And now the sun is set, 

The grave is hollowed in the cavern’s side, 

And a few friends are met 
That bleeding form within the tomb to hide. 

Scarce thirt}’’ summers old, 

His sun goes down ere half the day is done, 

And, as a tale is told, 

So all his work is ended, scarce begun.” 


614 


JOHN. 


Iii this short, sharp persecution under the doomed Agrippa, 
John’s heart was rent. There is a touching contrast in the fate of 
these two sons of Zebedee. One falls first on the field of strife, 
when the battle is just beginning, before ever the name of Chris- 
tian is heard. The other lives and toils for fifty years after his 
brother is asleep in his Lord. 

Mother and Mary, brother and dearest friends weep over James ; 
John lives until all his kindred and co-workers have passed away, 
and he like an aged, storm-beaten and lightning-scathed tree, 
stands alone, reft of his forest compeers, amid the puny saplings 
of a lesser growth. Unterrified by Saul’s bitter persecution, John 
remained at Jerusalem, while Peter, released from prison, was 
obliged to flee; when Saul first returned to Jerusalem, John seems 
to have been absent for a brief space, but he still abides at the 
Holy City until his filial duties are ended, and with reverent 
hands he lays Salome and Mary in the grave. This stay in Jeru- 
salem covered at least fifteen years from the first visit of the 
Apostle Paul to Peter, for when Paul goes up to meet the Apostles 
and Elders, John is there. 

Paul gives us a glimpse of the “ beloved disciple ” in his epistle 
to the Galatians. “And when James, Cephas, and John, who 
seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, 
they gave to me and to Barnabas, the right hand of fellowship.” 
We put this passage beside the fifteenth chapter of Acts, and our 
picture — the last Bible view of John, before we find him on Pat- 
na os — is complete. 

Sitting in this Assembly, John is characteristically silent, while 
his brethren speak ; at its close, convinced of the abundant grace 
of God bestowed on Paul, John, the gracious, gives him the right 
hand of fellowship, and utters, doubtless, golden words on the 
side of brotherly sympathy and unity. Some of John’s tender- 
ness seems to gleam in the epistle, written in this meeting, to the 
Gentile churches. 


JOHN. 


G15 


History, taking up the thread which revelation has dropped, 
shows us John at Ephesus, shepherd there of his Master’s flock, 
in the tumultuous and gorgeous city of Diana. Where he was 
between J erusalem and Ephesus is not recorded ; perchance travel- 
ling among those other Asian churches, to which he afterwards 
writes reproof and exhortation, at the word of the Angel, the Je- 
hovah, on Patmos. 

Paul has planted this Ephesian church ; John goes to cultivate 
the new growth. Here he sees the Christians bearing persecution, 
having labor and patience, trying all things, holding fast the 
truth, and full of fervent “ first love ” for their Saviour. Here he 
strove with the Nicolaitans ; here he preached the gospel of salva- 
tion, and converts flocked to learn of him. 

The early fathers give us a pleasant picture of John grown very 
old and reverend, with eyes yet keen, flashing with zeal and soften- 
ing in gentleness, with snow-white hair about brow and shoulders, 
sitting to teach his flock, and calling them all “ my little children,” 
and bidding them “ love one another.” 

In some of these years he wrote the three Epistles which bear 
his name. They are full of pastoral watch-care, and the tender- 
ness of personal friendship. The Son of Thunder thunders in all 
these epistles, whether against evil doers, Diotrephes, or anti- 
Christ. He sings of love, like a bird in its grove, but between 
the love-music come thunder-gusts of wrath against the ungodly : 
he shows his dual nature, hurling his anathemas like the red 
lightning-bolts, and lifting his love lay in the hushes of the 
storm. 

From the time when John gives at Jerusalem the right hand 
of fellowship to Paul, he is lost from the New Testament record, 
until, last of the prophets, and more glorious than any of the seers 
his predecessors, he reappears, on the “ isle which is called 
Patmos.” 


06 


JOHN. 


About the close of the reign of Domitian, between the years 
ninety-five and ninety-seven, occurred John’s banishment. At 
this time John was more than ninety years of age; his brother 
Apostles had fought the good fight unto death, and received the 
martyr’s - crown ; so, also, had many of their disciples and con- 
verts. Jerusalem, the beautiful and unhappy city, had tottered to 
its fall. John had from afar beheld that terrible desolation over 
which Jesus had wept : not one stone had been left on another of 
that glorious Temple; such tribulation as the world had never 
before seen had filled Zion’s cup of trembling ; the walls were 
razed, fire and sword had ravaged its streets ; Jerusalem was no 
more but a memory. 

John was sentenced to exile, and Patmos was the place of his 
banishment. 

Thirty miles from Caria, in Asia Minor, a great rugged rock, 
broken into sharp pinnacles, cleft into rough, verdureless defiles, 
desolate of all vegetation, abounding in sheltered bays, and fifteen 
miles in circumference, rises from the Icarian sea. 

Here Daedalus, most skilful artificer, as says the fable, saw his 
beloved Icarus, soaring on waxen wings too near the sun, plunge 
downward to his fate. Here the cries of the father thrilled through 
the affrighted air, while Nymphs and Nereids made thd grave of 
the hapless boy. 

“ O’er his pale corse their pearly sea-flowers shed, 

And strewed with crimson moss his marble bed ; 

Struck in their coral towers the passing bell, 

And wide in ocean tolled his echoing knell.” 

One small village has from time immemorial nestled on the 
north-eastern side of Patmos, by a deep gulf, where a few gardens 
have been made, and some poor straggling fruits and flowers ob- 
tain a roothold. 

So stern, so barren, so desolate was this starving coast, that 


JOHN. 


617 * 


Roman emperors could conceive no greater cruelty than to send 
men there, famished and unsheltered, to drag out their dreary 
days.- 

John, the “ brother” of all suffering saints, and “ companion in 
tribulation ” of the martyr band, was, “ for the word of God, and 
the testimony of Jesus Christ, ” sent to this meagre isle. Here, 
lonely and forsaken of men, on the high cliff, he saw the morning 
of a calm Sabbath dawn brightly over the sleeping sea. 

At the foot of the crag the gleaming waters slipped softly to 
and fro, dashing with a long sweU into the black recesses, and 
then slowly rolling out into the light. Sea birds wheeled and 
circled about the peaks, where they had made their nests ; 
dropped with shrill screams into the water for their .prey, and 
then exulting in their vigorous life, spread their broad white 
wings and sailed steadily away, until they were lost in the distant 
blue. 

On that grand morning, this lone isle of Patinos became the 
watch-tower of the Church of God ; and John, her son of keenest 
vision, standing on its heights, pierced the farthest clouds, and 
beheld the glories of the Celestial City, the shining arches, and 
dazzling foundations, and endlessly beautiful vistas of the New 
Jerusalem. 

Dear to John was the first day of the week which had seen his 
Lord arise ; each Sabbath dawned to his true heart an Easter 
morning, crowned with the resurrection from the dead. Still 
near in heart to his adored Master, as when he had leaned on his 
bosom at supper, John, in blessed soul eommunings, was "in the 
Spirit on the Lord’s day.” 

Pacing along the barren ledge of rock, his white head bowed 
on his bosom, his thoughts intent upon his Lord, was John, the 
last of the Apostolic band. 

Suddenly came a Voice behind him : John was by the sea, and 


618 


JOHN. 


the Voice he heard was like the voice of the ocean waves, the 
swelling tones of many waters. 

He turned. The mount of Transfiguration, with its glories, 
seemed to have come to him in his exile. There stood that ever 
blessed Son of Man, clothed in those garments whiter than moun- 
tain snows; girdled with gleaming gold; his face shining as when 
the three disciples beheld his glory, even as the sun in the mid- 
day skies. 

Overcome with joy and adoration, amazed and speechless at 
the thought that, after these sixty years, his glorious Master had 
come to him on earth once more, John “ fell at his feet as dead.” 

Never before, and never since was the veil so lifted from mortal 
vision, and man permitted to behold the Unseen and the Infinite. 
To John alone, of all the sons of men, was given to see the 
“ throne set in heaven;” the “ emerald rainbow,” and the “sea 
of glass, like unto a crystal.” 

He who had wept beneath the cross, saw the Lion of the tribe 
of Judah prevail to loose the seven seals. He who had all his 
lifetime studied and loved the law of his Lord, saw those cheru- 
bim who erst had guarded the gate of Paradise below, who had 
been set over the mercy seat, which Ezekiel had seen in vision, 
now bowing before the Lamb, saved Saints, singing, “ Thou wast 
slain and hast redeemed us by thy blood, out of every kindred, 
and tongue, and people, and nation ; and hast made us unto our 
God, kings and priests.” 

John, who had seen Jerusalem perish from the earth, saw now 
the end of all things finite. John, who had mourned above his 
murdered brother, saw now “the souls of those which were be- 
headed for the witness of Jesus,” that brother soul among them. 

It is John, the gentle and the ardent; John, the mild and the 
fiery, who heard the nations of the ungodly cry out of the wrath 
of the Lamb ; not of the fury of Judah’s Lion, but the wrath of 
that Lamb, so long despised, so long rejected. 


JOHN. 


619 


What time the glorious vision lasted who can tell ? Out of that 
ecstatic trance came John for the short remainder of his life, that 
he might finish the work God had given him to do. 

Domitian, the cruel, went to his own place. Nerva succeeded 
to the empire of the Caesars. The first act of the new monarch 
was to revoke all the edicts of his predecessor. Then had the 
Christians rest for a space, and they of Ephesus made haste to 
bring from banishment John, their Father in Christ; and place 
him once more in their midst. 

To the nearly completed canon of Scripture, John now added 
his Apocalyptic vision. He had already composed his Gospel, as 
supplementary to the narratives of the three earlier written 

In this half Greek, half Oriental city of Ephesus, the active 
centre of Eastern Christendom, after the destruction of Jerusalem, 
John closed liLf days. Here was gathered about him a strong 
and faithful Church. Their pastor, Timothy, had probably suf- 
fered martyrdom under Domitian, and many of his people had 
shared his fate. 

In this chief city of Ionia, stood the Temple raised to the 
huntress daughter of Latona ; the shrine of the queen of night was 
reckoned for its magnificence one of the seven wonders of the 
world, and its splendor was a proverb throughout the earth. 

In the very shadow of this monument of Paganism, John spent 
his latest days, and drew his last sigh. 

His death doubtless occurred about the close of the first century 
of the Christian era, when he had reached the great age of one 
hundred years. 

The evening splendor of his day of life shone from that glorious 
vision which had met him on Patmos. From that Apocalyptic 
hour, earth life had seemed a conscious dreaming, and his actual 
living had already passed within the veil, and was among the 
realities of the house not made with hands. 


620 


JOHN. 


“ No more, no more, 

The worldly shore 

Upbraids me with its loud uproar. 

With dreamful eyes 
My spirit lies 

Under the walls of Paradise.” 

Perchance as- a calm evening fell over Asia, and Ephesus, the 
stately, was mirrored in a golden and crimson sunset sea, John’s 
longing eyes may have been fixed on some glowing path of light 
that seemed winding on into heaven, and, or ever his attendant 

J 

disciples were aware, his soul had been set free, and had sped up 
into the paradise of God. 

“ For there the Sole-Begotten 
Is Lord in regal state ; 

He, Judah’s mystic Lion, 
lie, Lamb Immaculate. 

O fields that know no sorrow ! 

O state that fears no strife ! 

O princely bowers ! O land of Flowers 
O realm and home of Life I 
O mine, my golden Zion, 

O lovlier far than gbld, 

s With laurel crowned battalions, 

And safe victorious fold ! 

Exult, O dust and ashes, s 

The Lord shall be thy part, * » 

His only, his forever, 

Thou slialt be, and thou art.” 


THE END. * 


SCIENCE AID TIE BIBLE. 

GOD’S SIX DAYS’ WORK; 

OR THE 

MOSAIC CREATION AND MODERN DISCOVERIES. 

A Booh of Bare Originality and Beauty . 


By Bey. HEBBERT W. MORRIS, A.M., 

FORMERLY PROFESSOR IN NEWINGTON COLLEGE. 


The subject of tliis work is tbe grandest and the most profoundly interesting that 
can engage the science, or occupy the mind of man— the creation of the WORLD, of 
the UNIVERSE ! 

This remarkable work is eminently A Booh for the Times. No question of 
the present day is regarded with deeper or more serious interest, on every hand, than 
the harmony of scientific discoveries and the teachings of the Bible. 

Here the reader will find it demonstrated that there is no conflict between Scrip- 
ture and Science, that the facts of Nature and the records of Inspiration are in universal 
and complete harmony, and that true philosophy is ever the willing hand-maid of true 
religion. 

Aside from all this, this book, as a study of the general system of the universe, of 
the forms and forces and functions of creation, and as a 



Of the wide-spread harmonies of nature, is a volume of unsurpassed interest. Geology, 
Astronomy, Botany, Chemistry, Anatomy, Physiology, Natural History, have all been 
laid under rich contributions in its production. In a word, it embodies the very cream 
of scientific discoveries in every department of nature. 

The Author, with graphic pen and conscientious fidelity, traces the history of our 
planet from its remote and dateless origination through its successive and marvelous 
geological revolutions, the dark and dismal period of its last chaotic condition, and, 
finally, through the consecutive stages which, ultimately arranged, furnished and 
adorned it to.be a fit habitation for man. 

The field traversed by the writer is as sublime as it is immense — he leads us to con- 
template the impervious night of chaos relieved by the majestic fiat, Let there be Light 
— the clear expanse and magnificent water-works of the firmament established — the 
gathering together of the deep and wide sea, the upheaval of continents and islands, 
and their adornment in the charms and fragrance of vegetation— the unveiling of the 
glorious orbs of the sun and moon and starry hosts of heaven — the peopling of the 
oceans with fishes, and of the air with birds, of countless forms and sizes and habits, 
all disporting in their native elements and reveling in the bliss of existence— the intro- 
duction of the cattle of the field, the creeping things of the dust, and the wild beasts of 
the forest— and, finally, the creation of immortal man in the likeness and image of his 
Maker. In following our Author through these successive stages of the creation work, 
we are made to feel, beneath the clear blaze of his scientific torch, that the Creator has 
filled our world with thrilling realities, with beauties and wonders, delicious fruits and 
sparkling gems, 


A Hundredfold more Interesting than any Works of Fiction 

that the imagination of man has ever been able to produce. 

So clearly is the presence of PLAN, of wise DESIGN, and benevolent ADAPTA- 
TION exhibited in every object and scene of creation, that the reader is constrained, 
from step to step, to exclaim, 


.TRULY, THIS IS THE FINGER OF GOD! 


To him who will possess himself of the light and spirit of this book, the whole 
frame and arrangements of the globe will be beautified, all the revolutions of times and 
seasons invested with lively interest, and all the events of life connected into a harmo- 
nious system, while those who doubted Science rather than sacrifice the Word, will 
greet this book as a happy solvent of their doubts ; those who surrendered the literal- 
ness of the Word to the behests of Science, will rejoice that a means of absolute faith 
in both has been provided. 

The work is written in a popular and readable style. Abstruse terms are avoided, 
yet the laws of Science are all stated with a clearness and exactness that amount almost 
to surprise. While it delights the student and scholar, it is specially adapted to the 
understanding of the general reader. 

The Author, being both a learned Scientist and skilful interpreter of the Word of 
God, clearly reconciles Science to the Inspired Word, without any sacrifice to either the 
truths of the former or the literal purity and beauty of the latter. 

“ Scripture and Science have met together ; 

Genesis and Geology have kissed each other.’ 

The work abounds with beautiful full-page illustrations by the best European and 
American artists, which, together with its clear type and softly tinted paper, render it 
altogether a volume of unusual attraction. It contains over 600 pages, including en- 
gravings. 


AGENTS WANTED, 


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